Lisa Sorrell, cowboy boot maker

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.

This is the fitted last for the beige/jade ostrich boots. You can see how I trim and prepare the insole for inseaming later.

Side seams are done and the pulls are stitched on. I guess I need to fit the last now and put an insole on it.

I need to finish a couple of pairs of boots before I start this pair, but I wanted to get all the pattern pieces for these done first. Now if I need a break I can relax into cutting and skiving little pieces of leather, which is my idea of meditation.

I create my pattern design templates by stitching the poster board with no thread in the needle. The holes will close if you don’t have an extra piece of poster board behind the pattern template as you’re sewing. The backing pieces can be reused multiple times and after a while they become their own sort of art (right before I throw them away, that is).

The client for the boots with a landscape top approved the design conditionally but requested the addition of some purple in the sky. This is why I enjoy doing custom designs and working with customers — I learn from them and my work gets better!

All of the pieces for this pair of boots are completed.

Holding the template to cut the tongue reminded me of working for Jay Griffith, my first mentor. We cut boot tongues with a cutting die and a clicker. The clicking machine has a large flat beam that snaps down and smashes the sharp die through the leather, cutting it to shape. The tricky thing about cutting tongues is that the vamp (foot part) relaxes slightly after being crimped (stretched to shape). You have to pull it back into shape and hold it as you mark the pattern, which is what I’m doing here. When using the clicker, Jay encouraged me to hold the leather up under the clicker beam. He said, “Just keep your fingers flat and you’ll be fine!” (This is not an OSHA approved method, believe me.) And since he had disabled the safety on the clicker which would have required both hands outside the machine, and furthermore since I was young and too dumb to argue, I stuck my fingers up in there next to the die, carefully kept them flat, and managed to avoid either smashing all my fingers flat or cutting them off. 

Because of my training with a clicker die, I’m accustomed to cutting the tongue shape with the vamp folded flat. I believe some boot makers open the tongue area and cut each side individually, but I glue the leather together and cut both sides at once. The secret is to have a very sharp knife and to carefully hold it straight up and down. If you hold the knife at an angle, one side will be smaller and narrower than the other.