Whoa, this notion of 'cheating' seems misplaced to me.
It reminds me of when I tried to order some windows from a manufacturer out in the dairy country. I wanted to know why they couldn't make a proper historical style true-divided-lite window. The sales rep scoffed at me and said "You know, we used to make butter with a churn!" She couldn't stop laughing.
I just paper-pieced a zillion HST for my Sue Garman Washington Monument quilt. It was insanely easy and my 1 1/2" HST came together in lovely 16-HST blocks with very minimal tweaking, trimming, etc. when doing the rows and the HST had NO BIAS on the outside of the pieces
It was so much easier than the other piecing methods for making HST that I FELT like I MUST**** be cheating! Gotta love it!!!
If I put the Monument in a quilt show, will I have to tell them it was paper-pieced in part? How much of this technique stuff is simply means and methods?