Lisa Sorrell, cowboy boot maker

I inseamed four boots today and two yesterday.

Also, I’m going to be very sore this evening.

Pretty turquoise alligator boots and a weird Smurf hand

On the bench today

This is the first pair of cowboy boots I ever owned. Jay let me design a pair of boots for myself while I was working for him; I did the boot tops and then Jay and Woody finished them. I find them quite obnoxious now but I was proud of them at the time!

I have retroactively titled them “I Didn’t Know The Gun Was Loaded” as I definitely did not know how my life would change through finding cowboy boots and cowboy boot making.

My new deck of playing cards is available now! I worked on these for months and I’m happy with them. (They’re the reason I didn’t get a cowboy boot calendar done for 2025, sorry.)

These butterflies were an absolute pleasure to stitch.

Here’s an excerpt from a presentation about cowboy boots explaining why butterflies were and are such a popular theme for cowboy boots: “One reason for the prevalence of flowers, butterflies, and occasionally eagles on cowboy boot tops was simply practicality. A typical cowboy boot has a scallop that comes down into the boot tops, and the boot tongue extends up on the boot tops. This leaves sort of an H shape for decorative work. Flowers can flow into this space and fill it, but butterflies and eagles with their outstretched wings also fill the shape well.”

I’m making a reproduction of an old Dixon boot, and as I was stitching this top band I was thinking of Andy Dixon, the designer for Dixon Boots, and wondering if he’d think I’d done a good job and hire me had I lived in his town and time.

My mentor Jay Griffith told me that boot makers used to save the cut-out pieces from an inlaid boot and use them to create an overlaid design on another pair of boots. Anyone need a pair of cowboy boots with red overlaid butterflies on the tops?

Corrected the issue on the second brown boot this morning and got it on the last, and also lasted this pair of turquoise alligator boots