Imperial insignia filet crochet notes:
The above chart ImperialFilet is copyright 2008 Leah Fenton and is for personal use only. It may not be sold or used to make items for sale. The picture below ImperialFilet1.jpg is also copyright 2008 Leah Fenton.
This filet crochet chart consists of 37 meshes and 37 rows.
Use any hook, thread, and stitch style that will give as close to a square gauge as possible. Most filet uses double crochet stitches, but in order to get closer to 1 mesh and 1 row equal in height and width, I had to move to a larger hook size than I normally use for working with thread, and I had to use treble crochet (American, YO 2 x, insert hook into st, YO and draw through 2 loops 3 times) rather than double. Someone else may need to use double crochet, and someone else may need to use half doubles. To make a gauge swatch, you will work 12 sts and several rows. 6 sts and 2 rows should be even in height and width, because technically, each mesh consists of only 3 sts, though this type of filet is called “4 DC”; the 4th DC is actually the first st of the next mesh.
To start, chain 111 +4 for treble crochet fabric, 111 + 3 for double, and 111 + 2 for half double. Work 1 TC in 5th chain from hook (DC in 4th chain from hook, HDC in 3rd chain from hook) and each remaining chain, 112 sts. Make sure st count is correct before proceeding as corrections can easily be made on the first row.
Each row starts with a chain 4 (3 for DC, 2 for HDC) and counts as the first st.
Work following chart, reading even rows left to right and odd rows right to left. Dark gray squares are solid mesh, white are open mesh, and blue are popcorn sts.
To emboss the letters, you will use popcorn sts rather than plain doubles. To work a popcorn on an even row (wrong side facing), you will come to the mesh that has to be filled and work: TC in TC on the row below, chain 1, and place a 5 st popcorn in the next st. In order for the popcorns to stick up on the same side, when working a wrong side/even row, you will drop the loop, and rather than inserting your hook front to back as you normally would, you will insert the hook from back to front, catch the free loop, and pull it through to complete your popcorn. On odd/right side rows, you will insert the hook from front to back as you normally would. This is done so all the popcorns stick out on the right side. To work over a popcorn on a previous row, you will work in the TC before and on even/wrong side rows, you will chain 1 and put popcorn in popcorn, and for odd/right side rows, you will work TC, popcorn in popcorn, and chain.
This takes more time, so if time is of the essence, you may want to just work the letters in regular solid mesh style.
For a finer/smaller doily, you may want to switch to size 20 thread and whatever hook and st combo will give you a square gauge.
This is a work in progress, so I have not designed a border for it yet.
