Sure, you could do it that way. It might sound like a complicated process with NURBS, but once you have the tools down it's actually a lot quicker. I'm so used to making that NURBS environment sphere now that it only takes about 45 seconds.

The stitch tools are very useful but can be a little tricky. With the stitch edge tool you have to be aware of which isoparm you pick first because of the way the tool is set up with the bias (the bias can be adjusted), and also the tangency button in the options can cause problems if you don't know which surface you want to be tangent to what. Best thing to do is play around with some simple spheres/cylinders, stitching and detaching surfaces until you get a feel for what the options within the tool are doing.