Lisa Sorrell, cowboy boot maker

First, isn’t this a cool photo?

Second, notice how I’m cutting just inside the dotted lines? I do that on purpose because after the inlay is done I’ll need to stitch around it. The dotted line is my stitching line, NOT my cutting line. If I cut directly on the dotted line and then stitch on the edge, the entire design “grows” a little. This can be fatal for a design with multiple small elements close together or one that’s very close to the side seam.

Here’s a photo progression of the work I accomplished today.

This is the design for the pair of boots I’m making. It’s on top of the leathers I’ll use and off to the right are the pattern pieces for each bit of inlay.

I’ve marked each inlay pattern piece onto the appropriate leather, next I’ll cut them out and skive all of the edges.

Each piece has been cut and skived. I still enjoy watching a seemingly random pile of little bits of leather come together to form a beautiful boot top.

And… this is what my floor looks like after an afternoon of skiving.

I haven’t felt well today but the colors on these boots have cheered me.

There’s a little hole in this piece of leather. Instead of avoiding that area altogether I positioned the design so that I’ll be cutting out a flower shape where the hole is. I’m convinced that this is how and why cowboy boot makers discovered inlay and overlay.

Good news this morning! I sent a pallet through FedEx several weeks ago. Somewhere along the way they re-weighed it, decided it weighed 700 pounds more than it actually did, and tried to bill me for $1500 more than the original quote. I can only assume there was another pallet sitting on top of it when they re-weighed it. I’ve been fighting the charges for weeks and today I finally received a bill for the correct price.

These are the leathers and design for the next pair of boots I get to make.

Look what I got in the mail today! I’ve already updated my website if you wish to purchase.

I have a client flying in to my shop today to be measured, so I’m taking a chance and wearing something nice. My machines can sense new clothing and it’s usually the cue for one of them to decide it wants to be taken apart and put back together, which of course requires liberal amounts of oil that ends up all over whatever I’m wearing.

I have just been struck by a fantastic idea. I’m going to create a Memory game with pictures of my boots. Do you remember the children’s Memory game? It was a deck of little square cards containing pairs of pictures. You mixed them up and then laid all the cards out facedown. When it was your turn to play you turned over two cards. If they matched you got to keep playing, and whoever ended the game with the most pairs won.