Lillian Yeung's Waffle Heart

This adorable heart by Lillian Yeung (LillianTatLace on Instagram) is worked in one continuous pass, and is excellent practice to make sure your rings, split rings, self closing mock rings, and (if doing front side/backside tatting) reverse tatted rings are all the same size, as well as avoiding the dreaded "gaposis" of bare thread between the bases of adjacent rings. Don't look to closely at the tension on mine, it was late and I was tired. ;)  

 The next time I make it, I think I'll remove the first and last decorative picots from the rings in the tips of the heart - they got overlapped by my adjacent rings.  And maybe remove a couple stitches from the chain around the top, to accommodate differences in tension.  I don't think there was an advantage in doing reverse tatted rings to keep them all facing the same direction.

She generously shares the pattern for this fun little challenge (and a video tutorial) here.  Her site has a number of other very nice free patterns but it's a little hard to find them, as the tags are not consistent - definitely worth spending some time digging around!