For me it depends on the quilt whether I tie, hand stitch or machine stitch it.
Some quilts just beg to be tied IMO. I like to be a little different and use ribbon for tying. On ones for little girls I use the narrow satin or grosgrain ribbon and may even make the tails long enough to tie a little bow then tie the loops together for security. For the corduroy one I did I used a wider variagated nylon (?) ribbon that matched the colors of the quilt and had about 1" tails.
I tend to think a hand pieced quilt should be either hand quilted or tied. Somehow machine quilting just seems wrong if it has been hand pieced.
In general if it is machine pieced I think tied or machine quilted is usually most appropriate.
Just how I view things as a rule of thumb...each individual quilt is considered as it happens...LOL!