Lisa Sorrell, cowboy boot maker

I’m pretty excited about these because I think they’re one of the prettiest boots I’ve made. I’ll have them finished tomorrow.

I found this picture today of a pair of boots I made. There’s a raised cord design going around the front of the foot, precisely along the bottom of the vamp (foot) leather. To do this and get it perfect I had to put the boots on the last, mark where the cord should go, then take the boots off, put the cord in, stitch it, and re-last the boots exactly as they were before. Oh, and they’re a copy of that pair of boots featured on the fabric in the background. Lesson here: Artists can draw cool things but they have no idea how boots are constructed.

Successful day lasting boots with my apprentice

The purple lines show how I often see boot makers punch their holes in the insole for inseaming.

The blue lines show a better way to position the stitches; this way all of the stress for multiple stitches isn’t centered on one hole. Notice how I’ve angled the stitch/hole to keep an even stitch length on the outside edge.

Introducing: “Walking the Floor Over You”

A common misconception is that cowboy boot heels are made of wood. They are not; cowboy boot heels are composed of as many layers of sole leather required to achieve the desired heel height. Today I’m stacking heels, which means adding layers and leveling each one before adding the next layer.

Next comes building the heel and then these boots will be finished! The heel is made from pieces of sole leather layered on top of each other, one at a time, leveling each one before adding another, until the correct heel height is achieved.

This pair of boots has been waiting patiently for weeks to be lasted, and they went onto the lasts beautifully.

Inseaming boots always makes me happy. I enjoy doing it, I like knowing it’s done, and (assuming I did a good job) it gives me pleasure to look at it.