Kaleidoscope Sewing Machine Cover

Since I’m still on a quest to clear my sewing room of fabric scraps, I’ve been making a lot of tiny half-square triangles* these past couple months.
 
Over the years I’ve saved a lot of triangles, mainly cut-offs from binding, assembling certain quilt blocks and other projects. I might have been mad at myself a few times for starting this specific project since these little triangles took forever to stitch together! My goal is to always save as much fabric from ending up in the landfill when working with fabric and I would say that I accomplished that with this project.
 
For each square I used a darker and lighter color fabric.

I pieced four of these squares together, to form a small triangle quilt block, the darker triangles pointing to the middle and the lighter ones towards the outside. This layout reminded me of a kaleidoscope!

Initially my hope was to have enough blocks for a crib size quilt at least. I soon realized, for a number of reasons, that it wasn’t going to happen.
 
One, since the blocks were so small, there were a lot of seams close to each other which resulted in a stiffer than usual quilt. That would not have worked for a baby quilt.
 
Two, it took me quite a long time to stitch these 2 ¼ inch square blocks together. In the end I did not quite have enough blocks for a crib quilt, but as I mentioned earlier it wouldn’t have worked anyway. In the end I decided on making this quilt into a cover for my sewing machine.
 
I decided on an on point* layout for the blocks and added white triangles on the sides of each row and at the corners to form a rectangle.

I quilted a cross hatch design using white thread all over the quilt.

I used a neutral striped white and gray fabric for the binding and ties since the rest of the cover is so colorful.

Fabrics used:
Blocks - different types of quilting cottons
White triangles on sides and corners - Robert Kaufman Kona cotton
Backing - Kimberbell Tiny Dots in gray from Maywood Studio, a light gray with tiny white polka dots.
Binding & ties - On the Go by Stacy Iest Hsu for Moda Fabrics in the color steel

Just for fun, I counted the amount of triangles:
 
Amount of triangles used - 840 (for blocks) + 32 (for white border)
Amount of four-patch squares - 105

Finished size: approximately 20 x 33 inches (51 x 84cm)

* Half-square triangles: two right-angled triangles sewn together to form a square
* On point quilt layout: quilt blocks are positioned on the diagonal
 
Another example where I used half-square triangles in solid colors to make this mini quilt.