Filet crochet
Also: square crochet
Filet crochet is a crochet technique that imitates filet lace, building a picture from a grid of open squares (spaces) and filled squares (blocks).
Filet crochet is a way of making a lace-like picture with a crochet hook. The work is a grid: some squares are left open as mesh, called spaces, and others are filled solid, called blocks. Together they draw a motif, a letter or a border.
How is it worked?
In the standard method each square is edged by a vertical double crochet (US terms). A block is filled with two more double crochets; a space is made with two chains, skipping two stitches. A row of N squares is therefore 3 × N + 1 stitches wide. Some patterns use larger blocks, so a pattern should say which size it means.
How do you read a filet chart?
A chart looks like graph paper: blank squares are spaces and shaded squares are blocks. It is read from the bottom up, and because the work is turned at the end of every row, odd rows are read from right to left and even rows from left to right.
Where does it come from?
It copies the look of lacis, lace darned into a knotted square net. A 1912 pamphlet on filet crochet already pointed out that the same designs could be worked in either technique. You can make a chart of your own with the Teazle filet chart generator.
Sources
- What is Filet Crochet?. Needlepointers.com
- Filet crochet inside the box, outside the box. Interweave
- How to filet crochet. Gathered
- Filet crochet pamphlet by Hugo Kirchmaier and Anna Wijerfel Brown (1912), scan. Antique Pattern Library
See also
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