I do both, depending on what the project is. I have found that using "cheater" needles helps a lot when burying threads. If you've not heard of them, they have a notch in the top that allow you to quickly get your tails into the eye of the needle. Saves a lot of time.

I usually tie off the ends and bury them. It's just what I started doing when I started quilting. Probably because I started hand quilting. I prefer it now because I think it looks nicer (to me).

I tie and bury to minimize chance of ratty little ends where I least want them.

I do tiny stitches, too. By the time I'm quilting the quilt I just want to get the dang thing done! I've also done the old take a couple of stitches and backstitch one or two stitches with success. Once it's washed it all buries itself anyway. Entered a quilt in a local show with stitching like that and won best of show, so it goes to show that you don't HAVE to bury the stitches to enter a quilt in a show!

I took a LA class and the instructor suggested keeping a self threading needle by the machine to bury the starts and stops. I haven't tried it yet because my Fusion is being upgraded to work with the new ProSticher.

I pull the top thread through to the back and tie off my ends and bury the knot and thread. I find that if I do it in sections as I go along it is not that tedious. I often will do it while I watch TV away from my machine as a break. I'm seldom in a race to get something done so the fact that it takes longer is not important. I really like the look of it much better and feel more secure with that extra length of thread that nothing is going to come undone. I use a large eye darning needle so threading the needle is easy.

I try to make my stitching lines a long as possible to minimize the number of starts and stops but I prefer to tie and bury the ends. Since I really try to keep my stitches uniform in size it defeats the purpose if I use those little stitches or back stitches to start and end. I realize that it takes more time; however, I have already spent lots of time doing the piecing to get it as near perfect as possible. So, why shortcut the ending?

I like the look of burying the ends of the thread, so I went and bought a package of easy threading needles. I keep one in my pincushion for easy access, and instead of making a knot, I just draw the thread tail in the reverse direction of how I was sewing, and leave about two inches of thread hidden inside so I don't have to worry about the tail strings working loose.

I tie and bury the knot if it's a special quilt. If it's just a couch throw and not anything that's going to get scrutinized (and if you scrutinize my quilts, you never get another one!) - I do the tiny stitches and cut the tails off.

I use the lock stitch on my Janome then trim the ends to about 1/8 to 1/16 inch long. I have never had a problem of them coming "untied" and the thread end practically disappear after the first wash.