Help with a pattern (UK)

[Flossie]

Hi I’m new to this forum and I am hoping to get some help. I have been crocheting on and off for a while and have recently started again doing baby shawls. I am usually quite good a figuring out a pattern but this one has me stumped. It is an old Patons one with a border of ducks and a main square. It is the turning bit that has got me. If I can get any help I would be grateful.  I have just completed row 25 where it says ‘do not turn’. But I just can’t figure out row one as it says “work 7 treble evenly along side of next 2 rows”.  Any point in the right direction would help! Thanks 

[Granny Square]

Hi, welcome to the 'ville!  I didn't want you to think we were ignoring you, I studied your pattern yesterday and was confused - and I've done a lot of filet doilies (and coincidently am presently in the middle of a filet piece with birds in it).

However I've never followed a fully written-out filet pattern like this, I've always worked with a graph with open and filled meshes that maybe had a little bit of written explanation for odd parts - example for your pattern I'd have expected a written explanation for how to turn the corner between the birds, and maybe an explanation of how to make an open and closed mesh, but otherwise nothing but a graph--in your pattern, a graph of the 2 corner birds would do it, with an indication of which meshes were repeated for the birds on the straight sides.

I could not come up with a correlation between the written pattern instructions and the way the filet border appears to be made, by the way the stitches are oriented per the photo.  Instead of rounds of filet, turning corners, (which would be relatively easy) the stitch orientation suggests the filet is made in rows, 1 row working away from the center, the next coming back to the center, but the instructions don't say that (and it's a really absurd construction IMO, but that's what the stitch orientation suggests) - look at the leftmost duck which is the clearest, the stitches run across the duck; if the filet was made in rows around the center piece, the stitches would run head to toe).  

I'm missing something, and I'm sorry I can't figure it out; the instructions make sense stitch by stitch and sound like filet open and closed meshes, but don't overall if my theory is right; I'd think one row would end with 'connect to the center piece, slip stitch up, turn' and then '(next row) do xxx working toward the outer edge...

 

 

 

 

[bgs]

I have been looking at it too and thought this might be the section doing the ducks.  Since you at part where it says work second half of corner thus did you do okay with what I assume to be instructions for the first half of the corner.  Maybe if you give us a photo of where you are in your work this next set of instructions might click.  Sometimes it makes more sense if we know what these instructions are working in to.

[Granny Square]

Agree Bgs, it's talking about 'spaces' which I assume are open mesh, and doing multiples of UK triples that is compatible with open meshes.  My main 'disconnect' was the photo versus the instructions.

I am always tinkering with doily patterns to suit me (and this is doily-adjacent, sort of); I'll throw this out if it helps the OP, but I would have ignored the written instructions (for the filet) completely, charted that corner myself (graph paper and pencil, or scanning, printing and drawing on the scan).  The only thing that would not be traditional filet is the 'seam line' between the ducks; I have done that before on a filet square that was done entirely in the round but can't remember the details (it was a completely charted pattern - I'll look for it and come back.  

Meanwhile, for a filet reference for the OP - this site https://www.hassdesign.com/ has filet tutorials, click on stitch videos & instruction, then basic filet techniques; they are written, diagramed and video (scroll down a little for the stitch diagram, starts with open mesh).

[Granny Square]

I'm back--In the pattern I'd worked, the corners were chain 5 --so that's the ch5 that you are seeing in the above pattern; the chain 5 will become the 'undersides' of 2 open meshes in the next row.

So you'd work to the chain 5, chain 2, dc in the 5-chain-loop (the underlined makes an open mesh before the corner), chain 5, dc in the 5-ch-loop, chain 2 to start another open mesh, and dc in the stitch beyond the 5-chain loop to end the open mesh after the corner.  This sounds more confusing than it is...