Filet crochet graph paper
Chart paper proportioned for filet mesh, which is very nearly square — unlike most crochet, where the stitch is markedly taller than it is wide.
Opens with these settings already loaded. Change anything you like, then download as PDF, PNG or SVG.
Filet is squarer than other crochet
Most crochet charting has to reckon with a stitch noticeably taller than it is wide. Filet is the exception: a filet mesh is one double crochet plus two chains, and the resulting cell comes out close to square, around 1.1 tall for its width depending on hook and yarn. That is why filet designs read like cross-stitch charts while other crochet charts do not.
Filled and open, and nothing else
A filet chart uses two states only: a filled square, which is a solid block of three double crochets, and an open one, which is a double crochet and two chains. There is no shading and no symbol vocabulary to learn. That simplicity is exactly why filet was the technique of choice for lettering, portraits and lace panels in early twentieth-century pattern books.
Count the mesh, then add the turning chain
Your starting chain is three chains per mesh plus the turn, and getting it wrong by a multiple of three is the classic filet error — the piece simply finishes one mesh narrow or wide, and you discover it at the end of the first row. Count the mesh across your chart, do the arithmetic on the paper, and write it in the margin before picking up the hook.
Printing it accurately
This only measures correctly if your printer doesn't rescale the page. In the print dialog set Scale: 100% — not "Fit to page" or "Shrink oversized pages". If you're not sure it worked, print the calibration page, measure the ruler on it with a real ruler, and it will tell you exactly what your printer is doing to the page.