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Two previous developments led to the Chartres Cathedral Maze. The first was that we had abandoned our rules that everything was (a) knitted and (b) made from 45, 90 and 135 degree shapes. This gave us the freedom to create circles, and other shapes using crochet which is more free-form. The second was that we had discovered mazes and labyrinths.

The maze from Chartres, and its many variations, are found in most books of mazes. Because it is so well-known we decided it would be a good one to work with.

The background was made first. It was worked entirely in trebles, with twelve on the first round, twenty-four on the next, thirty-six on the next and so on going up in twelves. This makes a piece of crochet which lies flat but, after a while, it starts to become a 12-sided shape. Not being experts at crochet it took a little while to work out how to ensure it was a circle not a dodecagon. The solution was to put more extra stitches on some rounds but leave other rounds without any increases. By the time it got to the outside there were forty-eight extra stitches on every fourth round so it was really a 48-sided figure but that is enough sides to make it look like a circle.

The walls of the maze were then worked in surface crochet, using a thick, textured, yarn, following the lines of the circles. They are equally spaced on the background and the straight lines that come out from the centre follow the spokes created by the increases. Little did we know then that this would not only be attractive to small children, who liked to run toy cars along the paths between the walls, but also to blind and partially-sited adults and children who could follow the paths and walls very easily on the textured surface.

This is technically a labyrinth but is usually referred to as a maze.