Turn a Picture into a
Filet Crochet Chart
Filet knows two answers: block or space. Upload a picture, drop it to two tones, and the grid becomes a filet chart — solid double crochet where the image is dark, open mesh where it is light.
Built for Blocks and Spaces
Filet is the one crochet colourwork with no colours in it. That changes what a generator has to do.
Two Tones, Not Twelve
Every other generator here fights to keep colour count down. Filet starts at the floor: two. The preset drops your picture to two tones so the chart maps straight onto the only two things filet can say — a filled square (block) and an open one (space). If your image needs more than two tones to be legible, it is not a filet design.
Squares, Not Stitches
A filet chart is not a stitch chart. One square is one mesh unit, and the usual 3-dc mesh turns a row of N squares into 3N + 1 double crochet, because neighbouring squares share a stitch — the last dc of one square is the first dc of the next. Read the grid width as squares and do the arithmetic once.
Stray Squares Weaken the Mesh
In tapestry a stray stitch is a cosmetic bump. In filet a lone block floating in open mesh is structural — nothing braces it, and it drags the surrounding chain spaces out of shape. Heavy confetti reduction clears one-square specks so your shapes stay connected and the fabric hangs square.
It Has to Survive Being a Silhouette
Filet renders a picture the way a paper cut-out does. Shapes with a clean outline — a letter, a heart, a bird in profile, a leaf — survive. A face, a gradient sky, or anything relying on mid-tones collapses into noise. The two-tone preview tells you which one you have before you wind a single ball.
What Filet Crochet Is Actually For
Filet is the oldest picture-making trick in crochet, and it comes from thread rather than yarn: doilies, tablecloth edgings, curtain panels, chair backs, christening gifts. Worked in size 10 cotton with a steel hook it produces lace you can read from across the room. Worked in DK or worsted with a 4 mm hook the same chart becomes a blanket, a market bag panel, or a nursery name banner — the grid does not change, only the scale does.
The classic subjects have not changed in a century because they are the ones the technique can hold: monograms and single letters, whole words and names, hearts, crosses, roses, butterflies, swans, deer and birds in profile, ivy and vine borders, and geometric lace repeats. All of them are outlines. That is not a stylistic preference — it is the entire vocabulary of a fabric that can only be solid or open.
The mesh itself is simple. A space is one double crochet, chain 2, skip 2, then the next double crochet. A block is that same span filled solid with double crochet. Charts are read from the bottom up, with odd rows worked right to left and even rows back the other way. Because adjacent squares share their edge stitch, a fully solid row of N squares is 3N + 1 double crochet rather than 3N — the single most common place a first filet project goes wrong.
Filet vs the Other Crochet Colourwork
Filet vs tapestry crochet: tapestry carries every colour inside the stitches and makes a dense, opaque fabric — good for bags, useless for lace. Filet makes its picture out of holes, so the fabric is light and semi-transparent and needs a background to be seen against: a window, a table, a contrasting cushion. If you want a picture in colour, that is tapestry. If you want a picture in shadow, that is filet.
Filet vs C2C: both are worked in double crochet, and ArtPatt uses the same square-block geometry for each. The difference is what a square means. In C2C every square is a colour; in filet every square is a decision to leave a hole or not. C2C blankets are warm and solid, filet panels are lace. Same chart shape, opposite fabric.
Filet vs cross-stitch: filet charts look like cross-stitch charts and behave almost nothing like them. A cross-stitch grid can carry hundreds of shades and any amount of fine detail, because the fabric underneath never changes. In filet the grid is the fabric, so every square you leave open is a hole you have to design around.
Filet Crochet FAQ
More Crochet Pattern Tools
Crochet Pattern Generator
The main crochet generator — full colour, with SC, HDC, and DC ratio compensation.
Tapestry Crochet Generator
Dense multicolour SC colourwork — filet's opposite in every way.
C2C Crochet Generator
Corner-to-corner graphghan charts — same square blocks, solid fabric.
Mosaic Crochet Generator
Two-colour mosaic patterns with overlay charts.
Crochet Letter Pattern Generator
Type a word or name and get a grid — the classic filet subject, without a photo.
Crochet Yarn Calculator
Estimate yardage before you start.
Pricing
Free to Try — Finished Chart from $2.99
Free
Test your image in two tones before committing to any of it
- ✓Unlimited chart generation
- ✓Two-tone filet preset
- ✓Heavy confetti reduction
- ✓Numbered rows and columns
- ✓Download with watermark
- ✓No account required