I have done I-spy quilts for kids, and there's no other way. I've also done one miniature quilt that was fussy cut. The fabrics were from a bundle of scraps from a thrift store, and I really couldn't think of any other possible use for them, anyway. I found the foundation pieced frog pattern on the Internet:
http://www.winnowing.com/frog.html
I agree that it seems wasteful to fussy cut, but prefer to look upon the value of the fabric not in terms of every square inch, but as being a resource that costs a certain amount for what I want to do. If it seems worth it at the moment, I wouldn't hesitate. The difference between having lopped off parts of images all over a quilt or having exactly the centered, complete item, might be what makes the quilt worth doing or the fabric worth buying in the first place.