My late DH and I started quilting in the early 1980's and were definitely low tech. He would never use anything but scissors for cutting (I do use a rotary cutter now). He was a math whiz and made his own patterns, even for Double Wedding Ring. I think he would find it funny that people use a die cutting machine to cut squares. But I guess it is probably faster.
I have always done hand quilting, tried it on a machine once and it was a big nope for me. I was kind of shocked when I joined this board and saw all the "high-tech" things people used for quilting.