Finally, there were enough blooms on my potted coreopsis to attempt to make a dye, and so I did. This is classic coreopsis tinctoria, or plains coreopsis that I grew from the seeds. First shade took 30 min. in the dye, background- repeated dyeing including overnight. It turned out much more orange than I expected – the extract never gave me orange like this, only gold, but then, I never cooked the extract, just added boiling water to it. It might be worth experimenting with not cooking the fresh flowers also, just steeping in boiling hot water, and seeing whether the color is different. Unfortunately, I probably won’t get a chance to try it this year, but maybe someone else will :). Now, the recipe: Took about 20-25 coreopsis flowers, 1 cup water, boiled for about 5 min, cooled overnight, strained, added alum. The dye came out much weaker than I expected, maybe it needs a lot more dyestuff, but the color is very nice, and now I’m tempted to cook up some fresh mulberry and see how they combine, even though I totally don’t have time for this right now :).