Is This Considered Cheating?

I recently volunteered to re-draft the block our guild uses for it's logo because the instructions for our chatelaine have been photocopied to the point that the templates are somewhat distorted. I made my chatelaine from those earlier instructions and had a devil of a time with it. In the end my block was too big and did not fit the pattern....so I made a few changes ....set it on point and created this. Of course I had to "junk" it up with all sorts of embellishments.

The block is known as "Hands all Around" or the "Friendship" block which is fitting since our guild is The London Friendship Quilters. But for a fairly new or inexperienced quilter it is not a friendly block with all those Y seams. So I decided to include, in the new instructions, an alternate way of completing this block for the chatelaine. First I drafted the block adding the seam allowances for those who wish to stitch the seams in the traditional way and another set without seam allowances so it could be done using a fusible applique method.
I traced the pieces onto paper backed fusible web, cut and laid them out before pressing them to some light weight stabilizer. Then it was a simple matter of satin stitching (although this took almost as long as piecing would) but without un-sewing there was definitely less stress.

I realized as I was putting it together that I should have left a seam allowance for the outer edge, I will be correcting that.


Now I hate to waste anything and since I'll need a postcard for our exchange at guild this week I used this block, practiced a little mini-McTavishing, added some found objects and Voila! One postcard completed.

So I ask you........................Is this Cheating?