Sandsend Children's Hooded Jacket in West Yorkshire Spinners Bluefaced Leicester Roving - DBP0173 - Downloadable PDF

Sandsend Children's Hooded Jacket – Knitting Pattern Summary (DBP0173)

About This Design

The Sandsend Children's Hooded Jacket is a hand knit design by Sarah Hatton, published by West Yorkshire Spinners as a downloadable PDF pattern (reference DBP0173). This cosy, practical children's jacket features a hood, making it an ideal cool-weather layering piece for kids. The design is rated intermediate in difficulty, making it a rewarding project for knitters who are comfortable with shaping and construction beyond basic beginner level.

What Is Being Made

This pattern produces a children's hooded jacket — a structured, wearable garment knitted in a chunky weight yarn. The hood is an integral part of the design rather than an add-on, giving the finished piece a classic, outdoorsy aesthetic that is both functional and stylish. The jacket is designed to be knitted flat in separate pieces and seamed together, a traditional construction method well suited to garments with shaped hoods and set-in or structured sleeves.

Yarn: West Yorkshire Spinners Bluefaced Leicester Roving

The specified yarn is West Yorkshire Spinners Bluefaced Leicester Roving, part of the brand's Fleece collection. This is a chunky weight British wool yarn, with each skein containing approximately 150m / 164yds and weighing 42g. The yarn is made from Bluefaced Leicester fleece, a native British breed hand-selected by West Yorkshire Spinners for its superior stitch definition, drape, and luxuriously natural feel.

As described in the pattern, this yarn represents British wool "at its purest and finest" — a single-breed, traceable fibre that is both a sustainable and premium choice for a children's garment. The roving-style construction gives the yarn a soft, rustic texture that knits up beautifully in chunky projects.

Colourways Available

The pattern is shown in four colourways from the Bluefaced Leicester Roving range:

• Ecru (001)
• Light Brown (002)
• Brown (003)
• Variations (004)

These natural, undyed or minimally processed shades reflect the breed-specific fleece tones, giving the finished jacket an organic, earthy palette that suits children's knitwear beautifully.

Needles and Tension

The pattern calls for 5mm (US 8) knitting needles. The stated tension is 19 stitches over 10cm / 4 inches in the relevant stitch pattern. Achieving correct tension is particularly important for a fitted garment like a jacket, as it directly affects the finished size and fit of the hood and body panels.

Techniques Used

As an intermediate level knitting pattern, the Sandsend Children's Hooded Jacket employs a range of standard and slightly more advanced hand knitting techniques, including:

• Flat knitting — working back and forth in rows to create separate garment panels
• Shaping — using increases and decreases to form armholes, sleeve caps, and the hood
• Increasing — the pattern references inc (increase) methods to add stitches where needed for shaping
• Decreasing — dec (decrease) techniques are used to shape the garment panels
• Make 1 Purlwise (m1p) — a specific increase worked by picking up the loop between the last and next stitch and purling into the back of it, used for neat, directional shaping
• Working in pattern (patt) — maintaining an established stitch pattern across shaping rows
• Seaming — joining knitted panels to construct the finished jacket
• Hood construction — shaping and attaching the integrated hood, a key feature of this design

Stitches Used

The pattern uses a