Sewing With Nancy

When you think of quilts I'm sure the first image that comes to mind is a patchwork design cut and sewn from cotton fabric. Today, my Nancy's Corner guest makes traditional patchwork designs

but from a very different medium

cold, hard steel. Here to tell us about his art is Nathan Winkler of a steel company who lives in Fort Payne, Alabama, who joins us via Skype. Welcome to Sewing with Nancy, Nathan. Thank you, Nancy, it's a pleasure to be here. This is a fascinating story. Instead of fabric and thread you work with steel, barn board and tacks. Tell our viewers how you got started. Well, what actually happened is I went on a brief trip up to Iowa in the winter of 2010 with my mother. And since I was already doing recycling of the barn wood just tearing down barns locally here where I'm from I just naturally noticed the dilapidated barns around the landscape up in that area. Actually, that's how I first saw my first barn quilt by just paying attention to seeing the different dilapidated barns. It's just something that stuck with me. Later on that year, about in August, 2010 I decided to go ahead and traditionally start painting some pieces that I'd come up with off the Internet. I liked it, but I didn't really like, you know how it has to be really perfect, with the taping of the lines, and all. So I was looking for another medium that would really match my personality and style which is unperfect. I happened to just run across a piece of tin from a barn that I'd tore down recently before that. It started up with that. So you recycle the tin. You flatten it out and then you cut it. It's already flat. A traditional barn roof has a piece of, it's called 5V metal. It's got five small ribs and it's got nine-inch flat spaces on either side of the center rib. So I cut those out is how I get a flat canvas to work from. That's how I get the canvas. So the patchwork pieces are the steel or the tin. Then you use part of the barn wood, as well. I do, I use the material off the sides of the barn to wherever I get it from. I rip those down and I make a really simple, you know, frame to go around it, and it seems to work. I enjoy doing it. I love it. They're really attractive. I like quilt designs, and obviously, you do, too. What's your favorite? Do you have a favorite patchwork design? I would say that I like collaborations or collections. I like to do things that have meaning to them and some kind of background history. I really like all the patterns out of the Underground Railroad series by Eleanor Burns. I was actually given that as a gift when I spoke at a local quilt guild here. The Stitch or Two Sewers in Hamerville, Alabama gave me that as a gift. When I started looking through that book and just really seeing the cohesiveness of that whole design. The Drunkard's Path is probably my favorite pattern to do but that whole series is really intriguing to me. I really enjoy that. We use a lot of stitches but you use a lot of tacks, don't you? Yeah, like say on the Drunkard's Path there's probably on a 2' x 2' piece, there's around 400 tacks. I have to pre-punch those as well before I ever put the tacks in, so yeah, it's a process. It's labor intensive. I love the rust that comes through the patina of the tin. You don't really paint the steel at all, do you? I don't do it, unless it's requested, which is rare. I love the different rust patterns. They actually become like fabric to me. The way I see fabric just the different designs the rusts makes as it ages. It just really, I love that. That's my color palette, is really the rust palette. Tell our viewers about the vision that you have for a quilt trail in your area. Yeah, it's something that's not really known around here. I've already been promoting for about the last year on getting a quilt trail started in Mentone, Alabama which is up on Lookout Mountain. You know, it's a process and I've already probably given away, you know before this ever happened I've been doing this for three years and I've probably given away way more than I've ever sold. So, the town of Mentone is dotted with my pieces. So that, from three years ago that was my vision three years ago. I kind of started by just giving them away and getting them out there for people to see and try to get that momentum started. It's slow, but it's coming. I'm getting some other feedback from some other people that have done quilt trails in their area, which is helpful. I hope it just goes and gets big. I think it will, Nathan, and I'd like to invite you to come to our studios in a couple of years to tell us about how your vision has expanded. Thank you for being our guest. I have enjoyed it, Nancy, thanks so much. If you'd like to know more about the Steel Quilt Company you can go to our website, nancyzieman.com. You can re-watch this interview or any of our 70 past programs. Click on Nancy's Corner and find more about Nathan. As always, thank you for joining us. Bye for now.