Need advise on Circle appliqués please
 

I am making the pattern Sunflowers and Flying Geese. After needleturning the first outer circle onto the background, I tried reverse applique for the first time, and it worked beautifully!
My problem is the inner circle. There is no background and in spite of stay stitching, it still is causing me grief and lots of unstitching. I tried pressing under the seam allowance and hand stitching, facing a circle and machine appliquéd with invisible thread....and I am still not pleased. Any suggestions? Thank you!

what problem exactly are you facing?

Marion, I am struggling with appliquing the center circle with no background fabric behind it.

I too am confused as to what your issue is. Do you plan on doing the inner circle like reverse applique? (IOW you are turning under the sunflower and appliqueing that to a smaller background square?) What issues are you having? I think either way, whether you applique a small circle to the center or reverse applique the block to a small background square, lots of starch and glue will be your friend.

Your blocks are beautiful.

Edited to add, you may want to look into the technique known as applipiecing. There are some you tube videos out there. Sharon Schambers calls it Piecelaque and Caroly Bryer Fallert calls it applipiecing. I think it might help you. If you subscribe to The Quilt Show both techniques are shown there.

I cannot see a single flaw. Many times the quilter (you) will see things that no one else sees. If this is not a quilt for a quilt show I would not be concerned. The circles look perfect to me.

I would iron the circle on freezer paper, letting a little seam allowance hang over the freezer paper. Baste a running stitch along the seam allowance adding a few snips so it can fold over nicely. Hope I explained that clearly. Just sew it on with a blind hem stitch after.

So the idea of applique is to sew fabric onto other fabric ... I don't think this technique will help you since you aren't really doing that ... I'm not sure what the technique would be called, but if you can find what it's called, then you will probably get some better ideas on what to do.

The only thing I can think of is to put fabric in the back and then applique your inner circles to the back. This would work, if you aren't going to see the back, but if you are going to see the back, then no, this won't work.

Good luck, and I hope you get some help!

Your blocks are beautiful. We are our own worst critic when it comes to piecing and quilting. But, for the inner circles, this is the method I would use. NOTE: I would test this first on other fabric first, just in case you hate it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK4Wv1l61J0

Edited to add:
The beauty of this method is that your pieced part will be up to you so you should be able to tell that you are not cutting off any points.
One thing he did that I would not do is to iron the seam open. I would iron it to the inside of the circle so that your pieced outer edge can lay flat. Your outer circle already has enough seams and you don't really want to have to notch into it to get the outer part to lay flat by cutting into your seam allowance.

I would use a light weight Tricot. sew it in a circle on your fabric, turn it and sew it down. You can cut the inside of the tricot circle out if you want to.

Thanks for the replies....guess I am not conveying my issue very well....
The inside of the block needs a circle appliquéd to make the center of the block. The white pieced diamonds leave an unstable perimeter, and my circles get wonky if I try to make sure the white points do not get compromised. I have staystitched them, but it doesn’t really seem to help. Maybe I can baste some fabric to the backside of the sunburst, applique the center circle through the additional layer, and then cut the added fabric away from the back side.
Thanks for letting me think out loud! I am probably making this more difficult than it is.

What about using an iron on stabilizer fabric??
Might be easier to work with than basting something on, which will remain somewhat loose.
Then you would have a good solid/stable centre section, as you get your centre piece in place.

Your sunbursts are indeed beautiful!

This does sound tricky. Doesn't the pattern tell you how to do this? I know some don't give a lot of details. The ones in your picture look very nice.

This looks better! I used lots of starch, pins and fabric glue.....at least it looks fairly round and the points are mostly intact!

Maybe by the time I put together the required 18 blocks, I will figure this out! :). I will reverse applique this onto the background fabric.

Thanks for all of your tips.

If this were my project, my first reaction would be to "quarter" each piece with pins and sew it as a seam on the machine just like any other circular piecing like Drunkard's Path, etc. Even if I were piecing it by hand, I would still piece it as a seam and not as an applique.

I sew circles with tiny stitches to a lightweight fusible with the sticky side out so I can press it to whatever I want to appliqué to. It seems to work best for me and you can fudge it a little here and there to make it circular and where you need it tp b\go. I used this on my wedding ring quilt to get the segments to be rounded.

Whenever I applique circles I sew them onto a used dryers sheet right side down. Then cut a small whole in the center of the sheet and turn the circle right side out. The edges are sewn to the dryer sheet, no added bulk and easy to place onto the design.

That’s a great idea! I am sewing them to a thin muslin, but a dryer sheet would probably work better...thank you!

This really works. There's no method that isn't a little work with circles, in my opinion. I like your last picture. Whatever you did works for you. Looking forward to seeing your finished project.