Visit Ginny Beyer's web site. all of those spectacular quilts she creates are done by hand! she has great tutorials, tips and tricks for hand piecing.
personally i love to hand piece, everything is so much more precise and it goes lots faster than some may imagine.
one (trick) is every 4-5 stitches do a little back stitch; this locks you stitches.
and if you are putting 2 pieces of fabric right sides together and making a line of little straight stitches nothing should show through on the front...any more than they show when you make the line of stitching with a machine. :thumbup:
once you get going with it you will find you can easily create blocks by hand that are much more difficult (less precise) by machine....like set in seams.