Lisa Sorrell, cowboy boot maker

For those who have been consumed with curiosity about why the tack box has a corner cut off to create a triangular hole, it’s a factory technique. I bought out a boot shop and that’s where I got this tack box. When hand lasting, men would cut this hole, tip the box up, dump in a mouthful of tacks, and then spit them out one-at-a-time as needed.

I use gendered language here because factories used to be very specific when hiring. Want ads and books about how to set up and run a factory used gendered language: Get a boy to run pieces from department to department. Hire a woman to stitch uppers. Wanted: Girl to fill out order tags and tie them on. Wanted: Man to stitch boot soles, experience required. I assume factories are not so gender specific now — I’m pretty sure I could get a job in a cowboy boot factory doing anything I wanted to do — but it wasn’t always so.

Do you know why the corner is cut off on the Gurney tack box? There’s a reason it’s sliced off exactly as it is.

Today was all about patterns

It took a minute, but I finally convinced myself to start today’s work. The boot top pattern is created by stitching all the design lines on a sewing machine with no thread in the needle, and if your presser wheel rolls over a line of stitched holes it will smush them closed. This sort of design stitching is done in an entirely different order than actually sewing the leather and you’re constantly trying not to run over any previously punched holes the entire time you’re doing it. Now that it’s done I am far more enthusiastic about making these boot tops.

Two pairs of boots are completed and ready to ship to their new owners.

“Saddle It Around”

“Steel Pony Blues”

I didn’t necessarily intend to get the magnolia boots side seamed and turned today. When I arrived at work this morning there was a man who’d driven all the way from Nebraska to shop at my store. He’s a boot maker and one thing he’s been having problems with is sewing on the vamps and counters and trimming the side seam. I happened to be right at that stage with this pair so I offered to let him hang out and watch as I put them together. After he left I had some momentum going so I just followed through and got them together.

The magnolia boot tops are finished and I’m actually kind of sad. This design required a significant bit of mental energy to visualize and create, and now what am I going to think about?

In leather inlay and overlay, stitching does more than just hold everything in place. Stitching is the only way to add small details or create movement, and this is the sort of stitching I love to do. Once I’m finished, instead of large shapeless white blobs, they will be transformed into distinct flowers with petals and veins. There’s so much detail in these flowers that I elected to hand draw everything, and then accurately drawing it all again backwards was a challenge.

These boot tops were incredibly difficult to pattern and put together but they are nothing but sweet fun to stitch. I knew they would be! I usually don’t look forward to stitching but I’ve been eagerly awaiting getting these together for days. Even my sewing machine, which spent all day yesterday complaining about tension and the bobbins I’m using, developed the nicest possible mood as soon as I brought these to her.
Tomorrow, assuming I actually get to spend time in the boot shop, I’ll add all the detail stitching.

If I did a poor job of trimming an edge, my old boss Jay Griffith would tell me it looked like it had been gnawed off by a beaver. I felt the tool slip as I was trimming behind the beading so before I went back and fixed it, I had to tell myself that it looked like it had been gnawed off by a beaver.