Do You Use Loopers?

Do you use loopers?  Is there a method to your madness?  How do you see where each thread end is supposed to go?  I am going loopy using loopers!

For the final round of my doily, I need to make 16 motifs and attach them to each other and also to the doily as I go.  Each motif has a center ring, and then rings/chains to attach to that center to make flower petals.  I either need to sew in a lot of ends with a tapestry needle, or use loopers to ease that dreaded chore of hiding ends. I have been trying to use loopers, but I'm not sure I'm doing it correctly. The joins don't lay nice and flat the way I think they should, and it seems like sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.  I sometimes can't even pull the thread through - it seems much too tight, though my tatting doesn't necessarily seem tight to me.

For the tiny center, I start by tatting over the tails of my looper about halfway, and then tat over another looper leaving just a couple of stitches in between. 

This way, when I close my ring I have a loop at each end to pull and hide the ends.  I try to use different color thread for the loopers, and then make sure to pull the ending thread through the beginning looper, and the beginning thread through the ending looper.  (Clear as mud?)

It seems like sometimes this works, and other times it doesn't.  I don't quite know why!  But, I've made several of these little centers so I don't have to stop and do these little buggers as I do each motif.  Is this how you would tackle these?  I have no idea how to do this with a split ring to do the entire motif in one pass.

When I get to the next round of the motif, I start with a looper in the first ring.  I've tried putting it in the very beginning of the ring, and in this picture I put the looper at the end of the first ring - which seemed to work better to pull the final thread in, but doesn't lay as flat as it seems like it should.  At the very end of the motif, I put a looper in the final stitches of the last chain.

At this point, I joined the pink thread (shuttle) by pulling it up through the base of the first ring.  It makes sense then, to pull this end back into the chain with the orange looper to hide and secure the end. It has been joined to the ring, so pulling it back through the chain won't let it come apart.  Then, I pulled the green thread (ball) thread through the green looper up into the orange ring.  I think this is correct after carefully not pulling the threads back from whence they came and unraveling the whole thing.  [I've done this, too!]  

 Now the join doesn't look nice, but I'm not sure what I've done wrong.  I can find directions for the Magic Thread Trick, but I still don't quite get that other little thread.  Seems I have enough dangling threads just doing two loopers!  I feel like a fuddlefingers.  I certainly hope what I've done so far doesn't come apart . . .


Does anyone have any suggestions?  Am I making this waaaaay more difficult that it needs to be, or do I just need some more practice?