Hiccup's Armor (or, How to Be Your Geekiest)

Most of you are aware of the Dreamworks hit movie, "How to Train Your Dragon."  The movie now has a hit sequel in which the hero, Hiccup, wears a leather armor flight suit (see above).  My 7-year-old son thinks this armor is The Coolest Thing Ever.

Most of you are also aware that I'm a big, huge geek who's into the Renaissance Faire and leatherworking projects.  The gauntlet had been thrown.

For the past few weeks, Hubby and I have been making a modified version of Hiccup's chest armor for our son.  Modified because, once we built it, our growing-like-a-weed son would have it for five minutes and then be too big to fit in it.  So, we designed this armor to fit him for several years to come, because it can be taken apart and adjusted as he grows.  It's also easy for him to get on and off.

Thus, I give you Modified Hiccup's Armor.  Dragon not included.

It's not film-accurate, but for its purpose, it will do very nicely indeed.  We tried it on our older nephew, so we're reasonably sure that this will fit our son for the next five years or more.  Heck, taken apart, it even fits me!  We watched some pretty amazing video from "Modrenman," who designed the whole flight suit and went to pains to make it accurate.  We then cobbled together a posterboard mockup of the pieces, and made several subsequent trips to Tandy Leather for supplies.

We decided against doing the collar, so it would fit him more comfortably as he grows, and even made a miniature saddle for his stuffed Toothless, who attaches to his left shoulder using the big strap.  (I did mention we're geeky, didn't I?)

Result: one very happy little grade-schooler.  Too bad we don't have a Night Fury handy to send him off on an adventure. :)