Tips, tricks, finishing and a little more to practise
This is Part 5 of my Filet Crochet Basic series, the last part of the tutorial.
It covers topics like the significance of the correct stitch height, suitable yarns for filet crochet and blocking. Furthermore, you’ll find some more filet grids that you can practise with.
If you’ve missed the previous parts of the tutorial, you can find them here:
Reading and understanding the grid
Different ways of looking at the grid
Practising filet crochet Type I (3-stitch construction) / 4-dc mesh
Practising filet crochet Type II (2-stitch construction) / 3 dc mesh
A word about the stitches
Regardless of the type of filet crochet you use, your crocheted squares should appear square. This means your squares should be as tall as they are wide. It is always helpful to make a small swatch first. If your double crochets are too narrow, your squares will look rectangular rather than square and the motifs may appear distorted. To fix this, try lifting your stitches slightly to make them taller. Alternatively, you can replace the double crochets with an extended double crochet or treble. If you’re unfamiliar with these stitches, you can find an explanation here.
Yarn and hooks
Best suited for filet crochet is a fine, smooth yarn. Mercerised cotton is ideal.
Items like doilies or table runners are often made with cotton thread using a very small hook size. But also thicker yarns, such as sport weight (#2) yarn, for example, work quite well.
Filet crochet looks great in a solid colour. This really shows off the pattern to its best. A colour-changing yarn with long changes also works. I would not advise using a variegated or sprinkled yarn. This might distort the pattern.
Finishing
Once you have finished your filet crochet project, I recommend blocking it. This will open up the stitches and spaces and will give your work an even and defined look.
To block your finished piece, carefully pin it onto a blocking board. Take care not to distort the shape. A ruler can be helpful here if necessary.
For cotton yarn, wet blocking is recommended. Simply spray your pinned piece with water until it’s slightly damp and then let it dry well.
Unfortunately, wet blocking doesn’t work at all with acrylic yarn. In this case, I would recommend steam blocking. You can use either an iron with a steam function or a handheld garment steamer. With some yarns, a hairdryer also works. However, make sure to keep a sufficient distance. Too much heat can damage acrylic yarn.
A little more to practise
Would you like to practice filet crochet a bit more?
With these four additional filet grids you can either practise Type I or Type II filet crochet.
Two patterns with a 15×15 grid
When using a fine cotton yarn and a 1.75 mm crochet hook, the finished size will be:
- Type I filet crochet: approx. 15 cm
- Type II filet crochet: approx. 1O.5 cm
Two patterns with a 27×27 grid
Using the same yarn and crochet hook size as above, these two patterns should turn out in a size of
- Type I filet crochet: approx. 27 cm
- Type II filet crochet: approx. 19 cm
My Little Boxes Shawl
I hope you found these pages helpful. In case you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact me!
