Coreopsis dye

I harvested a small bucket of Coreopsis flowers and boiled them up in my big aluminium pot on the stove. Added som alum. Then in went a long strip of silk habotai some soft light cotton and some crisp white cotton doileys. Rinsed well in salt water. I was so pleased with the colour I added a few other pieces , cotton handkerchief and a piece of cotton crochet to the liquid dye when it had cooled. Still got colour even though I didn’t leave these in for long.

Here is a picture of these after washing and drying, no ironing of course. The image of the fabric in the pot really is very close to the real colour I achieved. They are much paler in the dry photo , certainly don’t get the beautiful depth of orange yellow on the silk and soft buttery yellow on the cottons. Much less harsh an orange than you get with onion or rusting. 

Oh dear they look so pale . My photography skills are very lacking as I don’t know what to do to give more realistic colour.