How to Read Filet Crochet Charts (Blocks, Spaces, and Direction)

Filet crochet charts look austere — a grid, some squares filled in, no symbols, no key. That austerity is the point: a filet chart is the easiest chart in all of crochet to read, because there are only two kinds of square and one rule about direction. Once you hold those, you can work any filet chart ever printed, including hundred-year-old ones, without a written pattern.

This guide is only about reading the chart. If you want the full technique — hooks, yarn, tension, edges — start with Filet Crochet for Beginners. And note that filet charts are their own thing: charts made of stitch symbols are a different system, covered in How to Read a Crochet Chart Pattern.

The only two squares

Every cell on a filet chart is one of:

• A space (open square) — the mesh. Worked as: 1 double crochet, chain 2, skip 2 stitches. It reads as a hole in the fabric.
• A block (filled square) — the picture. Worked as: 3 double crochets. Solid fabric.

That's the entire vocabulary. The filled squares form the image; the open squares form the background it floats on. Neighboring squares share their edge stitch — a block is "3 dc" but its last dc is also the first stitch of the next square. This sharing is why a row of N squares contains 3N + 1 stitches, not 4N, and it's behind almost every counting mistake in filet.

Which way to read

Filet charts read bottom to top. Row 1 is the bottom row of the chart, and you work it starting from the chart's bottom-right corner.

• Odd rows (1, 3, 5…): read the chart right to left.
• Even rows (2, 4, 6…): read left to right.

The chart's row numbers usually confirm this — odd numbers printed on the right edge, even numbers on the left, each sitting on the side where its row begins. You zigzag up the chart exactly the way the fabric grows on your hook. (Left-handed and working the mirror image? Swap every direction above; the chart itself doesn't care.)

The foundation chain math

To start a chart that is N squares wide:

• First square is a block: chain 3N + 3, then double crochet into the 4th chain from the hook.
• First square is a space: chain 3N + 5, then double crochet into the 8th chain from the hook — the skipped chains become the turning stitch and the first ch-2 space.

Worked example: a chart 20 squares wide starting with a block → chain 63, dc in the 4th chain from the hook, and continue reading row 1 right to left. Chain loosely — a filet foundation that's tighter than the mesh above it makes the whole piece smile at the bottom. Going up one hook size for the foundation chain only is the old, correct trick.

Starting and working each row

At the start of every row after the first:

• Row begins with a block: chain 3 (counts as the first dc), then work 1 dc into each of the next 3 stitches — first block done, including the edge stitch it shares with the next square.
• Row begins with a space: chain 5 (counts as 1 dc + chain 2), skip 2, dc into the next dc.

Mid-row, you're just answering one question per square — is it filled or open?

• Space over a space: ch 2, skip the ch-2 below, dc into the next dc.
• Block over a block: dc into each of the next 3 stitches.
• Block over a space: 2 dc into the ch-2 hole below, dc into the next dc.
• Space over a block: ch 2, skip 2 dc, dc into the next dc.

Four combinations, all obvious after one evening of practice.

The mistakes everyone makes

Counting blocks as 4 stitches. Two squares side by side are 7 stitches, not 8 — the shared edge again. If your rows keep coming out one stitch long per block, this is why.

Losing the row. Filet motifs repeat, and every row of mesh looks like every other row of mesh. A magnet board works; so does the free row tracker attached to every StitchingLab chart, which remembers where you stopped across devices.

Trusting the chart's aspect ratio. A filet square is slightly taller than it is wide in most people's gauge, so circles on the chart stitch up slightly oval. Designers who know this pre-squash their motifs; centuries-old charts often didn't.

Make your own filet chart

Reading charts is the gateway drug to making them. The converter has a filet mode — honest warning: it's built for silhouettes and text, since filet is a two-tone medium and photographs lose all their color. For lettering, borders, and motifs designed square by square, draw your own chart on a blank grid and the written row-by-row instructions generate as you go — blocks, spaces, foundation math and all.

Try the converter

Turn one of your photos into a free crochet pattern →