I mainly use Microtex/Sharps needles for piecing & quilting. I have used Quilting needles for quilting & find those especially helpful with vintage & repro fabrics because of the looser weave. I like Metallica and/or Top Stitch needles when working with metallic threads because they have the larger eye to keep the thread from shredding. I use Universal needles for garment construction & home dec. Here's the reference guide I use when deciding on a thread:
http://www.schmetzneedles.com/needle-guide/
If you do a lot of different types of sewing (piecing, quilting, garment construction, jeans/home dec, vinyl, etc), your best bet if you only want to use a single type of needle is always a Top Stitch needle. You'd be hard pressed to find an industrial sewing floor that uses anything else because Top Stitch will sew any type of fabric at all, with the most consistency & it is generally the easiest to thread. I look at it kinda like the Ford Crown Victoria of needles. That was a perfectly acceptable, reasonably priced, reliable vehicle that was used for millions of police cars, as well as a lot of the insurance institute testing for safety. It could do most things that were needed at an economical price point. It wasn't Ford's top performing car & it wasn't particularly great for certain activities like racing or driving off-road. You could certainly do those things in a CV, but there were better options for them. Fortunately, sewing needles are much less expensive than buying an SUV or sports car just to use on occassion, so buying a needle that is specifically designed for a particular task is not as unreasonable as buying multiple cars.
Still, at the end of the day, even if all you have are 50 packs of Universal needles that you really need to use up, unless you are engaged in professional or competition quilting, even a Universal needle will typically give you an acceptable result in both sewing & quilting. Some stitches might not form as well. The needle will be
slightly more prone to breaking, but the difference is a matter of degrees. So the moral of my story is: Sew with what you like & don't worry about the Quilt Police.
