I have used the automatic eyelet stitch on my modern machine to "tie" a quilt. I wanted as minimal quilting as possible on a whole-cloth type quilt (I was using a neat Indian-style block printed tablecloth as a quilt top), so I found a flower in the print with a center just about the same size as my machine made eyelets and used that as my "tack" stitch everywhere that flower appeared in the print.
Not a conventional use, but it worked great!