Title: Sewing Lessons
Author: me
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: I only wish I owned these guys...D=
Summary: Hiccup learns to sew when he is only eight years old

Hiccup learns to sew by firelight during winter's blizzards when he is only eight years old. Stoick, it seems, sews a mean hem (well, how else is he going to keep his accident-prone son in clothes that aren't rags?), and is determined that his son, if nothing else, can maintain his own clothes. It is a process fraught with frustration for both father and son, and full of pricked fingers and ruined bits of cloth.

"Not so tight! See, ye've pulled that too tight, and now it lies askew"

"Sorry dad..."

"Undo it and try again"

By the time Hiccup is nine, he mends his own clothes, and Stoick, although he says nothing, is pleased to see that his boy can do at least one thing right. His hems are still a little shaky, but he can darn and patch well enough that his father no longer bothers, and his stitches are much finer. During his tenth winter, Stoick gifts his son with his mother's needles and thread, and in the depths of winter Hiccup learns how to sew the more complex patterns under his father's eye. Stoick cannot manage his wife's delicate needle work, but he is pleased that the patterns will be put to good use.

In Hiccup's twelfth summer, the village compliments Stoick on the embroidery of his family's clothes and wonders which trader he got them from. Gobber only laughs.

(In his fourteenth winter, Hiccup learns to knit)

AN: dedicated to, and inspired by atruebluesky, who wrote lovely fic about plush toy dragons and spawned all sorts of plot bunnies about where Hiccup would learn to sew. I'd link, but ffnet is being picky about that - its on the train_dragon livejournal - look for "Stiches Come Undone"