The only hand-stitching I do is when sewing down my bindings. I have two different ones that work well for me: Poke-a-Dots sticky plastic that are reusable for quite a while and the other is (I think) a 3M product that a friend gave me. They are small round sticky suede-like dots. I place them just at the tip of my middle finger and sort of push the top edge under my nail a bit. I really like these as I was getting a permanent hole in the finger before I discovered these. I had a hard time finding a regular thimble that would fit well enough to stay on my finger.

Hope that helps - happy quilting!