Beautiful quilt!
When I made my OBW / kaleidoscope ones I only read the instructions as far as how to do the cutting so I was not inhibited by the requirement to keep the straight of the grain on the outside. Lol!
I do agree that it does probably make it easier to join the hexes together, but I didn't experience any major difficulty except when I tried to add a border and had trouble with getting the setting pieces right.