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You know how they say that if you dont know what colour to decorate your room that you should take a look at your closet? Apparently, whichever colours you like to wear are the colours you would like to live in. 

Well, that's all well and good, but I do see a couple of important limitations. For one thing, if this were really such a good idea, 90% of New York City would be painted black.

An even bigger concern is my own problem. Red and purple are the predominant colours in my wardrobe. I like the two colours very much. And indeed my apartment is grey with red and purple accents aplenty. I think it looks pretty nice. 

So anyway, Im mostly a solids kind of girl--not big on patterns--therefore, everything I have is EITHER red or purple. I wanted to tie things together a little so that visitors would believe me when I said red and purple go together. (not that anyone would DARE tell me they dont. It's just an insecurity thing.) So I went looking for some sort of home furnishing in BOTH red and purple. You wouldnt believe how hard that is! (Of course, having said that, now everyone will go out of their ways to point out red and purple things to me.) Clearly, red and purple are great for clothes but not so popular in the home décor centres. Nothing I could find had both colours, had the right shades of the two colours, or was in my price range. 

SALLY ANN TO THE RESCUE!

Yeah, baby. Who woulda thought that the Salvation Army would end up being my salvation? ...Wait...never mind. 

One day while browsing in our local thrift Mecca I found this little purple, red and black striped chenille sweater hanging on the rack. And when I say "little", I mean even if I lost a hundred pounds and had a breast reduction this thing would still cut off my circulation. But that's okay! I had no intention of wearing it. Instead, I turned it into a decorative throw pillow. 

I had a small pillow form from a pillow that no longer matches my décor. I roughly measured the size that the sweater needed to be to fit over the form. Then I sewed across the top of the sweater effectively decapitating anyone who might have been wearing it at the time. Then I sewed up the sides. (If I were just filling the pillow with batting and didnt care about the size, the sweater's side seams would have been sufficient.) 

I left the bottom of the sweater open, inserted the pillow form, then sewed up the bottom by hand. Fortunately, the bottom edge was the ribbing so I didnt have to worry about my crummy hand sewing technique not being enough to stop fraying.

I already had the form and the thread for this project, so the finished product cost me a whopping $3.99. (the price of the sweater.) I guess if youre going to dress your apartment like you dress yourself, your clothes are the best accessories.  

Now the bold colours of my apartment are tied together as tight as that sweater would have been.

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