Lisa Sorrell, cowboy boot maker

I laid the soles yesterday, stitched them this morning, pegged them this afternoon, and answered the phone/talked to people/ran errands/did paperwork in between times.

I stitched the turquoise boot soles with lavender thread and the red boot soles with burnt orange thread.

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.”