Filet Crochet

What is Filet Crochet?

Filet crochet (sometimes also spelled fillet crochet) is a technique that involves different “meshes” to make a fabric. There are filled meshes (solid pieces) and open meshes (holes). Think your grandmothers doilies or antimacassars (that’s the fancy word for those things over the back and arms of the chairs). Its lacy, delicate, pretty and not too difficult to produce yourself.

The pattern is made by placing filled meshes on a background of open mesh. Check out this page at Crochet Treasures, which gives you a pretty good idea of the concept.

Reading a Filet Crochet Pattern

Before you can stitch it, though, you have to understand what it means. Filet crochet patterns use charts to show you where the mesh starts and stops, as well as where to double crochet and where to chain.

A filled mesh is formed by a series of three double crochet stitches, while the open mesh is made with a combination of double crochet and chain stitches. It sounds more complicated than it is, and once you get used to reading the charts its really pretty easy to do, as long as you pay attention to where you are in the pattern.

Filet Crochet Pattern Variations

Many patterns are written in the manner described above, but some use treble crochet instead of double crochet, and some use a different pattern for making the open crochet. Sometimes patterns will say that two filled meshes next to each other share one set of double crochet, so instead of doing eight double crochets in a row you would only do seven, for instance.

For this reason its important to read your pattern carefully to know how the pattern was originally worked so you can do it the same way and end up with a similar result.

Resources for Filet Crochet

Perhaps the best source I’ve found for filet crochet tutorials is Smart Crochet. This lengthy tutorial, featuring a lot of text, drawings and pictures, describes just about every pattern and design permutation you could think of.

A less comprehensive but still useful site can be found at Hass Design. This page teaches you how to read a pattern and provides links to the company’s online crochet-alongs, where you can work on your crochet while connecting with others, or learn the stitches in a self-paced program.

And Stitch Guide, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite sites for learning anything about embroidery, knitting, crochet and more, has videos and text instructions for all the basic filet moves. It also offers free patterns that you can download and use the techniques while you’re watching the videos!

Filet Crochet Patterns

Here are some more sources for filet crochet patterns, in addition to those mentioned above:

• This site has a good collection of vintage filet crochet patterns and others from around the web. Some of these are no longer live, but for the most part it is a useful site.

• Crochet Pattern Central is another site with links from all over the web. There’s probably a fair amount of overlap in these sites, but this one is much easier to read.

• A handful of patterns are available from Crochet Doilies, including a pretty cool border pattern that you could use on a pattern found elsewhere (or one you draw yourself).

Related articles

Learn to Crochet

Free Crochet Patterns

Free Baby Crochet Patterns

Free Afghan Crochet Patterns

Free Crochet Poncho Pattern