Depending on the quilt and the preferences of the person whose quilt it is, sometimes the quilting needs to be front and center. Other times, it should enhance the piecing.
Here's an example: I built a labyrinth quilt, I didn't use the 10 colors or whatever the pattern called for, I did it in three marble batiks without prints on top of the fabric. With only three colors, the huge expanses of fabric needed something to make them interesting. That quilt became a quilting canvas with lots of feathers.
A friend gave me her beautiful red French braid. The fabrics were so interesting that I had a hard time not just SITD the whole thing and giving it back to her. I wanted to see all of the fabrics and no quilting. She insisted she wanted my custom work though because she'd seen the labyrinth. There's not a single feather on that quilt. I actually put Asian looking fans on it, curlicues and swirls and because I did SITD all of the braids, I was able to keep it really sparse for the rest of the quilting. Of course, that also means I did the hardest thing. SITD on a LA is not the easy job it seems like it should be. It's easier on a domestic machine.