Garden Flowers Vest in Caron Simply Soft Collection & Simply Soft - Downloadable PDF

Garden Flowers Vest – Knitting Pattern Summary

About This Design

The Garden Flowers Vest is an original knitting pattern designed by Lorna Miser, available as a free downloadable PDF. Described as a fun, light vest with fair isle detail, this project is a pullover-style slipover — a sleeveless, vest-shaped garment worked in a combination of solid stockinette and colorwork panels. It is rated intermediate difficulty, making it an excellent next step for knitters who are comfortable with basic shaping and ready to explore stranded colorwork techniques.

The vest is sized generously across a wide range, with finished bust measurements from 35 inches (Small) up to 60 inches (3XL), and finished lengths ranging from 20 inches to 25 inches depending on size. This makes it an inclusive pattern suitable for a broad range of body types.

Techniques Used

This pattern draws on several core and intermediate knitting techniques:

• Ribbing: The lower body begins with a 2-inch ribbed hem worked in a 1×1 rib pattern (alternating knit and purl stitches), which provides a neat, stretchy edge that keeps the garment from flaring at the hem.
• Stockinette Stitch: The main body fabric is worked in classic stockinette (knit on right side, purl on wrong side), creating a smooth, flat surface ideal for showcasing colorwork motifs.
• Fair Isle / Stranded Colorwork: The vest features a fair isle detail — a traditional technique in which two or more yarn colors are worked across a single row, with the unused color carried (stranded) across the back of the fabric. This creates the decorative garden flowers motif referenced in the pattern title.
• Armhole Shaping: Standard bind-off and decrease shaping are used to create the armhole openings. Decreases are worked using k2tog (knit two together), skp (slip, knit, pass slipped stitch over), and ssk (slip, slip, knit) — techniques that create neat, mirrored decreases on either side of the garment.
• Short-Row Shoulder Shaping (Wrap and Turn / W&T): Rather than using stepped bind-offs for the shoulders, this pattern employs the wrap and turn (W&T) method. This involves bringing the yarn to the front of the work, slipping a stitch purlwise, returning the yarn to the back, and turning the work mid-row. This technique creates smooth, diagonal shoulder seams without the stair-step appearance of traditional bind-off shaping — a hallmark of more refined, intermediate-level construction.

Stitches Used

• 1×1 Rib – for the lower hem band
• Stockinette Stitch – for the main body panels
• k2tog (Knit 2 Together) – a right-leaning decrease
• skp (Slip, Knit, Pass Slipped Stitch Over) – a left-leaning decrease
• ssk (Slip, Slip, Knit through back loops) – a left-leaning decrease worked through the back loops for a tidy finish
• W&T (Wrap and Turn) – for smooth short-row shoulder shaping
• Fair Isle colorwork stitches – worked in stranded two-color technique across designated rows

Materials – Yarn

The pattern is written specifically for Caron Simply Soft yarn, a worsted/aran weight acrylic known for its soft hand, smooth stitch definition, and wide color palette — all qualities that make it particularly well-suited to colorwork projects like this one.

Three colors are used:

• Main Color (MC): Caron Simply Soft in Bone (9703) — used for the majority of the vest body. Quantities range from 2 skeins (Size S) to 4 skeins (Size 2XL–3XL).
• Contrast Color 1 (CC1): Caron Simply Soft in