Filming is nearly upon us!
One of our first scenes is the montage in the workshop where Hiccup builds Toothless's saddle. We'll show him cutting, sewing, hammering, but at the end of the day he really isn't the one who builds the saddle. I made the saddle. Want to see how I did it?
I looked at LOTS of reference images online. Toothless's saddle is upgraded every movie with more buckles and straps and even a metal hand grip in the third one. But, unfortunately, I'm not as savvy with tools as Hiccup is, so I opted for this simple roundish lattice-looking design used in the first film.
The dragon stand really came in handy for this project because it was like i had the dragon right there in my living room, holding perfectly still while I took all its measurements.
I then made a pattern out of butcher paper to lay my fabric strips on to get the basic shape down, before sewing them together.
I ended up being rather like log-cabin-quilting so, it didn't take all that long to sew together all the strips once they were cut out. And I wasn't too concerned with the shape of it at first since i knew I was going to cut it down to size.
After all the pieces were sewed together and the seams ironed, I pinned the whole thing down to my rug to keep it flat. I then drew the outline of the saddle shape using my butcher paper pattern as a guide. Cutting it out was then pretty simple.
I cut out a piece of cotton batting and a felt back, which I sewed to the front, leaving a hole in the bottom so I could pull it right-side-out again. I also sewed in four loops with wooden rings attached that I painted silver to resemble metal. If Hiccup was actually making this, he would have forged himself some REAL metal rings, but he was busy saving Berk so we got imitation metal today.
The last step, of course, was to hand sew up the bottom. This was my favorite part.
And there you have it! Your very own Dragon Saddle
I'm excited to film Hiccup making this in his workshop. It will look a lot cooler when he does it I'm sure. But he won't have a sewing machine, so it will take him a bit longer :)
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