Well my solution is I gave up on this quilt and am going to do something completely different....but the bright side is I have a scratch quilt for quilting practice, and a charity quilt when I'm done practicing....
I tried several techniques last night. The only one that gave me good results was the flip and sew technique with the dryer sheet. At some point, I'm going to try this with water soluble interfacing.
At the end of the day, I still think applique is definitely not my thing. I've always thought so....