This year, my mother turned 88. Oh, and a couple months before the big day, she kindly mentioned that she would love something crocheted…and oh by the way, blue was her favorite color. Subtlety was never Mom’s strong suit.
So, what to do? I had been wanting to learn filet crochet for a while. An old-lady friend of mine (she’s 6 months younger than my mom and known in the Twitterverse as La Wrinkly Tres) has been doing filet crochet for years, although I didn’t know it. With a little guidance and inspiration from La Wrinkly Tres, and the great find of a book by Betty Barnden called Filet Crochet, I pressed on. Then there was this beautiful crochet thread by Isager that I found at Knit Purl on a trip to Portland, OR.
Things were starting to come together. It took several first tries to get the first row of mesh squares done correctly. To say that directions on a chart are scant is an understatement. You really have to know what you are doing to use them. The only directions on the chart I found (and yes, they are all like this) was:
This is 69 squares wide and 57 squares tall.
Chain 207, DC in 8th chain from hook.
What the charts don’t tell you is that you need to know whether you will make a small mesh, medium mesh (which seems to be the standard), or large mesh filet. That is what determines the number of chains to add after the designated chains for the image. Once I got that first row completed correctly, however, the rest of the work was a breeze. I say that coming from over 20 years as a cross-stitcher. If you are used to following a cross-stitch pattern, you can learn filet crochet in a heartbeat.
Here is the beautiful resulting picture after it has been blocked and just before shipping it out for Mom. She loved it, by the way.
Filet Crochet Hummingbird
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