Another walk down Woods Road

I’m excited to tell you about a brand new pattern revamp! I love revisiting older designs of mine and bringing new life to them. One that has been on my list for a very long time is Woods Road Vest, originally published on 2011 (can you believe that is 14 years ago?!). And I’m thrilled to tell you that the revamped version is now available! What’s new about it? So much!

I changed the construction so that it’s worked from the top-down. I’ve designed lots of top-down garments before, but never a top-down vest with a shaped armhole like this.
I expanded the size range, offering 10 sizes to choose from, from 32″-64″ finished chest circumference.
The pattern layout and writing-style is updated to reflect my most up-to-date standards.
I created a new “tips page” on my website that provides tutorials for every technique and process used in this pattern, along with how to make common adjustments.

The Original

Want to see the original photoshoot from 2011? Check them out below (and my 32 year old baby face from back then!). I knit this version in Quince & Co Osprey.

The Update

Here are photos of my updated version. The green version is The Croft Aran by West Yorkshire Spinners and I’m wearing it with no positive ease at all. So the fit on this one is a more tailored, open-style. The yellow version is Lucky Tweed by Kelbourne Woolens and I’m wearing it with approx. 2.5″ of positive ease.

Yarn & Gauge Info

The pattern has a stitch gauge of 17 stitches = 4″/10 cm, so it works well for worsted-weight or a light aran-weight. In both of the photos above, I used yarns that are categorized as either heavy worsted or light aran. For me, The Croft Aran (in green) attained that gauge on a US 9 needle, and Lucky Tweed (in yellow) attained that gauge on a US 8 needle.

On my Woods Road Vest tips page though, I also provide info on how you can adapt this vest to work for a slightly looser or slightly tighter gauge as well (so 18 sts or 16 sts = 4″/10 cm). With it’s simple silhouette, adapting for a slightly-off gauge is an easy alteration to make.

The great thing with this simple garter ridge stitch pattern is that is looks great in all sorts of yarns – solid, semi-solid, tweed, variegated, etc. You can even play around with 2 colors, using a contrasting shade for your “ridges”.

Construction

So one unique thing about Woods Road Vest is that it’s knit from the top-down. Typically vests with this type of shaped armhole are knit from the bottom-up, but I wanted to figure out a way to make it top-down but in a simple and straight-forward way. I was so excited to play around with this construction idea and was super happy with the results.

In addition, I incorporated short rows at the top of the shoulders (German short rows to be exact) and this helps to provide a nice shoulder-slope.

Test/Preview Knitters

Because this revamp was so significant, I wanted it to go through a test/preview knitting process before officially re-releasing it. I want to give a BIG shout-out to my test/preview knitters who helped to bring this revamped version to life!