filet square

I found a square pattern over at Sandi Marshall's site and thought I'd give it a whirl. It is called the Off Center Lines Square.

The square is worked in filet crochet. You might recall that filet crochet is composed of solid blocks and open blocks. Blocks can be 3 dc blocks or 4 dc blocks. This pattern uses 3 dc blocks, meaning that each block is composed of 3 double crochets. Over five stitches there are two blocks with the center dc being part of each block - the left side of one and the right side of the other.

If you are not familiar with filet and you want to learn, you might be interested in Learn To Do Filet Crochet In Just One Day. If you are already familiar, you might like a book I have in my personal collection Filet Crochet: More than 70 Designs with Easy-to-Follow Charts (Stitch Collection). My daughter liked it so much, I purchased a second one for her.

The original filet pattern calls for two rows of dc top and bottom. I find when working a pattern like this with a lot of open blocks, solid rows sort of ruffle. That might be my tension. I don't know. Well, it was no different with this pattern, so I ripped it all back and deleted the beginning row of  solid squares.

I began with Row 3 as my Row 1, then I worked that same row for 13 rows. Then I worked Sandi's Row 12 as my Row 14 (solid dc row), then finished off with 2 more rows of her Row 3 for a total of 16 rows.

That ended on a wrong side, so I chained 1 and turned. I worked sc all around, using (sc, hdc, sc) in corners. I plan to make more squares and the join them.

As Sandi notes in her post, you can make a bunch of these in different colors and turn them different ways to make all your afghans look differently. Way cool, eh?

It's very important for your squares to be SQUARE, however. They have to be the same width and length or they won't go together well if you turn them different directions when you assemble them.

Finished size of MY square is 9". (I've made another one, but haven't taken photo of it yet.)

Another change I was made was with the starting chain. The original says to ch 36 and go into the 5th chain from hook. I could see no reason to go into the 5th chain from hook with a solid block at the beginning of the row. I chained 35 and went into the 4th chain from hook. You need 33 dcs on that first row and that number would give me the proper amount. Some might even want to go into the third chain from hook. It depends on your tension. I tried that, but didn't like the look of it for me.

You know I'll keep you posted on my progress. I realize I AM starting to accumulate some UFOs here so I see a UFO day coming soon. I still haven't finished the sweater and I'm still making granny squares, but haven't assembled any of them yet. I need more yarn!! LOL I also started a Jacob's Ladder which got only as far as one color. I also have a lot of small balls with which I want to make some yo-yos.

Happy crocheting!
Sandie