I always do needle turn by hand. I made the Let Sleeping Cats Lie as a gift as I appliqued the mice by machine. IT LOOKED HORRIBLE LOL!!!! I took one out completely and redid it. The fusible gummed up my needles and that was a pain.
Beth Ferrier makes it look so easy in her machine applique books, but all of the twisting and turning to applique the mice was hard.
I agree about not using the satin stitch to applique on the machine - it made mine pucker a lot.