Cowboy boot soles layed, stitched, and pegged
When you put the soles onto the boots, they’re “layed.” Stitching the sole to the boot through the welt is the “stitched” part, and then after you put in a double row of wood shoe pegs the soles have been “pegged.”
It always makes me a little bit happy and a little bit embarrassed when these boots appear online. Here’s the story: I started working for legendary boot maker Jay Griffith when I had just turned 21. I had no experience with cowboys, western wear, making cowboy boots, wearing cowboy boots, nor any comprehension of traditional cowboy boot designs or themes. Jay was often drunk and one day when he’d had a few too many, we needed to start a pair of boots where the customer had requested a prickly pear design. Jay told me that much, instructed me to draw a prickly pear design, and retired to his office.
I’d never seen a prickly pear.
This part of the story will betray my age — I’m pretty sure I walked to the library and looked in an encyclopedia for a picture of a prickly pear. Perhaps I’d seen a photo of someone else’s boots with prickly pears? I really don’t remember. Lacking any sort of ability to draw a design or understand how a design should be drawn, I simply used one of Jay’s existing floral designs and stuck a prickly pear on top of it. I’m not sure Jay was impressed but he was either too drunk or too amazed at my design to argue.
And that is the story of how these “magically weird” (as described by Jennifer June) boots came to be. They are now owned by boot collector Mark Fletcher, and the photo credit is his also.
I woke up yesterday and my thumb was hurting, which always sends me into an instant spiral of worry and sadness. But it feels better today and still feels fine after inseaming! I want to finish this pair by next weekend so I’ll hope for healthy hands and generous time in the shop.
The soles are on the Wake Robin boots and every day I promise myself I’ll inseam the Satan Is Real boots and every day I don’t get to inseam. I didn’t manage to pry myself loose from the computer until 4pm though, so maybe tomorrow.
Inseaming is sewing the narrow strip of leather welt to the boot through the insole. This is done with a heavy cord that tapers at the end so it can be attached to a bristle. The bristle guides the thread through the stitching holes so you can pull the cord through. The cord attached to a bristle is called a Waxed End. Making waxed ends isn’t any fun but I enjoy inseaming. The stitches need to be pulled down tightly so they won’t open up with wear; inseaming is physically tiring but it gives you great muscles. I inseamed two pairs of boots today!
In this photo you can see one pair of inseamed boots and waxed ends made for two more pairs of boots.
You may observe that sometimes I say a boot “fights back” when I’m trying to last it, but I want to make it clear that whenever I say this it’s due to one of two things: I either patterned it incorrectly and am trying to correct bad patterning through hard pulling, or it’s ostrich.
Except for these boots.
These boots gave me hell (haha, that’s an appropriate joke) trying to get them on the last and I have no idea why. I finally decided they were possessed by satan, for real. I’ve had both of them on the last, back off the last, back on the last, and repeat. I managed to successfully get one on the last yesterday afternoon, then staggered off to my women’s wine group where everyone kept asking me if I was OK until I got some food and wine in me and perked back up. This morning I arrived at the shop, dreading Round Two with Boot Two. That little hypocrite fell onto the last like it had been waiting for years, looked me in the eye, and threatened to sue me for libel if I maligned its character on social media (so please don’t tell).
Anyway, they’re both on the last now and trying to convince me that they’ve never misbehaved and never will again.
The Satan Is Real/Louvin Brothers boots are side-seamed and turned right-side-out. They’ll begin looking like boots soon!
I’m making progress on the “Satan Is Real” boots. The next step is sewing the side seams and then adding the boot pulls.
Success! Goodness I’m tired. (But also, don’t they look good?!?)
The measure of a successful boot maker is knowing when to quit, and by that metric I am a very successful boot maker. I have to leave early today so I wet these boots down at 11am and thought I’d get them both on the last before I left. Instead, it’s almost 1pm and only one boot is on the last. Ostrich is notorious for twisting when you last it but this was ridiculous. I really wasn’t sure I was going to win. The *proper* way to last a pair of boots is to last in the toe first, then the ball, then pull the heel down and last it, but every time I did that when I pulled the heel down the entire boot went sideways. I tried multiple times with zero success. Finally I decided that if the right way didn’t work the only thing left to do was the wrong way. So I lasted the heel, made sure it really was straight, and then lasted the forepart. It took some coaxing to get everything to sit right on the last since I’d started at the wrong end but I did finally succeed.
There are two well-known boot maker’s prayers; we all recite them whether we realize it or not. One is “Please match, please match” (since we’re working with rights and lefts) and the other is “Please fit, please fit.” But there’s another lesser known prayer. Whenever there are two identical tasks, one is always harder than the other, so my prayer today is “Please let that one be the hard one!” Later this afternoon I’ll learn if that prayer will be answered in the affirmative.
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Lisa Sorrell, cowboy boot maker 