I would vote for hand quilting as well. I do hand quilting for other people and they mail the tops to me.
This makes me think of a GFG I did for a lady. Not only were the hexes about the size of a quarter (coin), she wanted each one hand quilted, and the binding - she wanted to preserve all the hexes on the edge, with no binding, so I hand stitched the top to the back (both even) around every single hex!! OMG - was I glad to be done with that one!