Wasarasa Calico with peacock and shifting grid print

At first, wasarasa often involved just copying patterns from Indian printed calico, but as time went by there was a move toward the expression of patterns unique to Japan. Imported calico in the Edo period had the advantage of being color-fast when washed, but it was hard for Japanese people to work out the techniques behind this by merely looking at the cloth. They thus adapted familiar techniques to enable dyeing with pigments. Pigments, however, fade when washed and, as a result, wasarasa was mainly used in applications where washing was not required such as futons, traditional jackets, furoshiki Japanese wrapping cloth, and bags.