Lisa Sorrell, cowboy boot maker

The landscape tops are nowhere near completely stitched yet, but I feel like Bob Ross. Look at my happy little trees!

All of the pieces are together now and the boot tops are ready to be stitched.

The final puzzle piece for the landscape boot tops was the tree trunks. I was relieved when I had skived all four little trees without lopping off any branches and having to start over. Even though the tops already have many components, the stitching will add all the final details like shadows in the grass and wire between the fence posts, plus there’s a tiny little bluebird who’ll be sitting on the fence.

Tomorrow will be a day of skiving. In England the word skiving can also mean goofing off, but tomorrow I won’t be using that definition — I’ll be thinning all the edges of this leather with a very sharp knife so there will be no bumps or ridges where they join.

I’ve been dreading starting this pair of boots for two reasons:
1.) Selecting the colors. These tops require several shades of green and I’m always worried I won’t have the right green. I mean, I do have probably the largest colored kangaroo selection in the world but there are many shades of green I don’t have and obviously I need more. Also, I’m talking about my own personal collection here and no none of it is for sale please don’t touch.
2.) I had to pull out every shade of green and all the other colors so I could compare them all and make the proper decision and now I have to put them all back in their little color coded spots.

My friend Michael lost his eye in a car accident and I’ve been making him nice leather eye patches. Once I found out he had a sense of humor about it, I got creative.

One pair of shoe uppers is done; now I need to start on some cowboy boot tops so I’ll have two pairs going. I rarely ever work on one pair of boots or shoes because there are times when something needs to dry. It’s not efficient to only have one project in the works — if you’re doing nothing while waiting for something to dry, you’re wasting time.

I finally have the quarters stitched for this little pair of tall lace-up shoes. I recently learned that this technique is called echo stitching. Even though I thought of it independently I didn’t invent it, but as far as I know I’m the first to do it on leather. It takes a VERY long time and I’m relieved it’s done and I can go on to more fun things, like putting all the pieces together.

Introducing: “After The Fire Is Gone”

I made this pair of boots in February of 2002, and they came back to be re-footed and remade this spring. I wasn’t naming my boots in 2002, but since they came back and I got to work on them again I decided to give them a proper title.