Lisa Sorrell, cowboy boot maker

Introducing: “Ain’t No California”

I’ll let these boots sit on the trees overnight, or possibly a day or two, but soon I’ll take them down, polish them, sand smooth the pegs that are sticking up through the insole, and they’ll be done! The soles and heels are going to be natural. They’ll be a little darker because I’ll put Bottom Stain on the leather before polishing and that will make the leather a deeper, richer color.

It always makes me a little bit happy and a little bit embarrassed when these boots appear online. Here’s the story: I started working for legendary boot maker Jay Griffith when I had just turned 21. I had no experience with cowboys, western wear, making cowboy boots, wearing cowboy boots, nor any comprehension of traditional cowboy boot designs or themes. Jay was often drunk and one day when he’d had a few too many, we needed to start a pair of boots where the customer had requested a prickly pear design. Jay told me that much, instructed me to draw a prickly pear design, and retired to his office.

I’d never seen a prickly pear.

This part of the story will betray my age — I’m pretty sure I walked to the library and looked in an encyclopedia for a picture of a prickly pear. Perhaps I’d seen a photo of someone else’s boots with prickly pears? I really don’t remember. Lacking any sort of ability to draw a design or understand how a design should be drawn, I simply used one of Jay’s existing floral designs and stuck a prickly pear on top of it. I’m not sure Jay was impressed but he was either too drunk or too amazed at my design to argue.

And that is the story of how these “magically weird” (as described by Jennifer June) boots came to be. They are now owned by boot collector Mark Fletcher, and the photo credit is his also.

Inseaming is sewing the narrow strip of leather welt to the boot through the insole. This is done with a heavy cord that tapers at the end so it can be attached to a bristle. The bristle guides the thread through the stitching holes so you can pull the cord through. The cord attached to a bristle is called a Waxed End. Making waxed ends isn’t any fun but I enjoy inseaming. The stitches need to be pulled down tightly so they won’t open up with wear; inseaming is physically tiring but it gives you great muscles. I inseamed two pairs of boots today!

In this photo you can see one pair of inseamed boots and waxed ends made for two more pairs of boots.