Spaghetti Chains Part 2

You've heard the expression that "a picture is worth 1000 words" and I try to find examples of what I'm talking about to help with my explanations. Sometimes though, I know of perfect examples, but I don't use them because:
A. They belong to other people and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings
B. They are the creations of other designers and I won't knowingly infringe on anyone's copyright. (And I won't ask for permission see A.)

Consequently I'm stuck with using my own designs. That creates a problem, because once I have identified what NOT to do, I generally don't repeat my mistakes. That means that I don't have good clear examples to show people. It's part of the reason that my post about spaghetti chains has only one picture. I was trying to show you what I meant by re-tatting a design I did that had spaghetti chains, but having my website hacked created a lot of extra work and I ran out of tatting time. I did get as far as the spaghetti though :)

You can see that on the first row the chains go wherever they want and the clovers on the corner twist. The outside of this design has no structure to hold it in place. So I added another row.

This denser row added some structure, but it still twists in a hundred directions. Don't worry though, I did finally get that sucker pinned down. Here's what the original finished doily looks like.

See that nice negative space in the middle? That's those spaghetti chains that opened the design up and made it pretty. The denser row around it gave it definition. On their own spaghetti chains usually give you a crappy design. That doesn't mean you shouldn't use them. They have their place, you just need to be aware of them and know what they'll do to your design.