I have stippled by hand, but only with a stencil. I always start at the center of the section and quilt toward the edge, like I do all quilting, so I won't quilt in any wrinkles. I use hand quilting thread. I don't notice that it makes a quilt stiff any more than any other close-stitching method, like cross-hatch or parallel lines. You can find different stippling stencils on-line, but if you go really small-scale, you might lose the pattern in hand quilting. I wold go with a medium or large scale stipple, unless you are really good at fine, small hand stitches. (I'm not, so I'm just speaking from my own experience.)