A ONE-SIZED pattern that I wrote up for myself because my chest is way too small for most men’s patterns; feel free to take my charts and modify the vest to fit different bodies!

This is a gansey-inspired vest design. The bottom half of the vest incorporates the ribbing pattern from Jack Frost’s Sleeveless Ribbed Pullover #4034, which is a free vintage men’s vest pattern from 1947. The top half design combines moss stitch, 6-stitch cables, and tree of life cable patterns. The cable patterns are symmetrical.

The vest is knitted flat and bottom-up with shoulder shaping on both front and back panels. Shoulders are joined using 3-needle bindoff, then the side seams are sewn together using mattress stitch. Armhole and v-shaped neckline ribbing is knitted by picking up stitches after seaming. The front and back panels have identical stitch pattern designs.

This vest only has one size (fits my own 74 cm flat chest, garment measures 84 cm (33 in) at underarm, more detailed measurements see schematic). I wrote this pattern as concisely as I could and somewhat lazily, so you will need some experience with reading knitting patterns, with making garments, and with techniques such as cables and short rows to follow or modify this pattern. No written instructions for cable patterns are given. No instructions for placing appropriate stitch markers are given. No instructions for marling are given. I also did not bother with writing short row instructions normally and drew a pair of charts instead, so be warned… (Although questions and suggestions are always welcome!)

• Gauge: 22 stitches and 34 rows = 10 cm in stockinette stitch with largest needle
• Yarn: DK weight at least 677 metres (740 yards), or holding multiple strands of yarn together. In the sample, I marled together three strands of 3/27 NM cashmere (i.e. 3-ply 9 metres per gram, roughly fine 4-ply/heavy lace weight).
• (I haven’t tested this yet, but marling instead of using a single strand of yarn is probably going to help you get row gauge. The DK yarns out there with the correct stitch count typically have a row gauge of 28 rows per 10 cm, which is going to give you a vest that’s 10 cm too long. So my recommendation is to go wild and marl your lace weight stash yarns together and play with some colours!)
• Needles: US 2½ - 3.0 mm, US 4 - 3.5 mm, US 5 - 3.75 mm, US 6 - 4.0 mm. Different size needles (3.75 mm and 3.5 mm) are used for ribbing in the round and worked flat respectively to account for subtle gauge differences.
• A cable needle, a row counter, waste yarn as stitch holders, and some stitch markers are going to help you a lot.

Edit 1: If your version of the file is v1 or v1.1, there are two critical typos in the armhole shaping section and pick up stitches for ribbing section respectively, which have been since corrected. I also added a new diagram to explain how to pick up stitches in v1.2 the latest version. Also silly me forgot to credit myself in the pdf file LOL

Edit 2: New version v1.3 fixed mistakes in schematics and back panel short row instructions.

Edit 3: New version v1.4 fixed mistake with row numbers in cable charts and written instructions. Old version was 2 rows off.