oh, i totally understand about your time.  here's the problem:  i had two basic needs.  one was a circular blanket/cover.  i ended up using a rectangle, which worked better.  the other was a dress for V4 that made a big circle on the ground.  this i brought into Poser, ran a cloth sim, had pretty horrible triangular bends in the bottom/train that should have been wrinkles, brought it back into Blender and subsurfaced and smoothed it into a nicer shape, then reimported it as a static prop.  in both cases, the problem was that by the time the very large outer edge had enough detail to simulate properly, the inner part had so many unnecessary polys that it was too heavy to use as cloth.  i needed a circle with a more even distribution of polygons. 

your solution would be great if i needed a rigid circle, or a very small one.  it's not so great if what i need is something with a significant radius to deform in soft, believable folds and wrinkles.