NANCY MARTINY: "Like here, at the start, I’ll hit it pretty hard and then I want that to look like there's some contour to that petal."

She cuts the leather into complex patterns of flowers and leaves. This is a skill she first learned as a teenager. She watched her father tool leather.

NANCY MARTINY: “So when I was fifteen, I talked him into helping me get started tooling. And then I kind of took his tools and made myself a belt and of course my friends at school they had to have a western belt and it kind of started just like that.”

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: She began by making things like belts and purses. Then she met one of the best saddle makers around, Dale Harwood. He made her a saddle tree. A tree is the form for a saddle that all the leather gets attached to.

Nancy Martiny builds her saddles from the ground up

Nancy Martiny had tooled saddles before. But she had never made one herself. She worked on the leather design at home. Then she would go to Dale Harwood’s shop for advice.

NANCY MARTINY:“He’d walk me through things and I’d make little notes, and then I had my little notebook after I got through this first saddle.”

That notebook became her best tool.

NANCY MARTINY: "I got my nerve up and I started on a kid’s saddle and [I would] look at my notebook. And when I’d get in a real wreck I’d call Dale, and when he had time he’d help me and I’d get through. Well, I got them saddles built, and then somebody would say 'Hey, why don’t you build me a saddle?'"