Lisa Sorrell

So jealous. I'd love to own a church building and put it to use for good.

Gosh, the Face-Eating Leopard Party is eating faces? Surprise face.

I can't believe I get to make this pair of boots. They're a reproduction of a vintage pair that I have loved for years.

I was a little slow putting these together because I kept pausing to admire the colors and the effect of the cognac alligator with the chocolate boot tops.

These boot tops are making me happy.

Sincere question: How many things could we destroy and how much good would it do if all of us requested new gender IDs and changed our name to something stereotypically the gender we’re not?

This set of boot tops has been incredibly bossy about how they're going to be brought into the world.

Completed set of inlaid and stitched boot tops, with pulls
The second photo shows what the inlay looks like from the back, before it's lined and stitched.

I'm not sure I'm tough enough to maintain this level of rage for four years, but... deep breath... I'm willing to try. What doesn't kill me makes me stronger.

And if it kills me, just remember that I died mad.

I've really been in the mood to cut, skive, and sew boot tops and shoe uppers recently. At some point I'm going to have to begin lasting everything and building boots! In the meantime, here's the next set of uppers on the work bench.

For several years I've been trying to come up with an alternate name for evangelical christians. They're nothing like Christ so they don't deserve to be called Christ-followers, but what else should they be called?
It finally hit me this morning! From now on, let's just call them Church Nazis.

I got these shoe/boots on the last today! I've been quietly terrified I'd forgotten how to last shoes, but they were so compliant. Maybe I'm also getting better at patterning.

While these will be made on a cowboy boot last, they are shoes and are patterned like shoes rather than cowboy boots.

YouTube video by Today's Wild West The $10,000 Cowboy Boots Hand made by Lisa Sorrell

"When you get a job in a boot shop you are trained to do your job. No one's going to pay you to learn to be a boot maker."

Interview link with Mark Beador of Today's Wild West, and it opens with this curmudgeonly quote. Check it out for more sunshine, rainbows, and life in a boot shop!

I love it when my customers prove me wrong. When this client chose the colors, I thought it would be bland and I wished he'd chosen brighter colors. I was mistaken! I love how deep and rich and elegant these colors are together!
#lisasorrell #cowboyboots #leatherart #bespoke #itsabootlife

If you look closely you'll see that there are four of the larger pieces stacked on top of each other; the design is cut completely by hand with an X-Acto knife. The top one is upside down because one is a mirror image of the other. Initial pulls are not reversed.

Design drawn on poster board and leather for the boots: cognac alligator, chocolate, cognac, forest green, and benedictine kangaroo

Finally starting a real pair of cowboy boots

It's not quite a Derby and not quite an Oxford. I prefer Oxfords but I hate the way the tongue lining is done and the closed, fixed lace gap. On the other hand, I don't like sewing the quarter over the vamp on a Derby. This design solves both those issues for me.

All four bluebird top panels are stitched. Considering each panel took me around an hour, I'm pleased to have them finished. My usual goal when designing and stitching a boot top is to be able to start, stitch the entire boot top, and finish right back where I began without stopping.

One panel in a set of four cowboy boot tops, with inlaid bluebirds and feathers

I have one (1) of the four (4) bluebird top panels stitched. This is going to take a while.

Hey corporate media,

Thou shalt not spend thousands of hours on one CEO’s shooting and only one hour on a classroom of children.

cowboy boot top with inlaid birds and feathers

My original plan was to introduce the color lavender in the shaft of the feather. Friday I flirted with making it purple instead but I hated it, so I took out all of the purple leather and replaced it with lavender. It looks so much better. I'll do all the stitching with lavender also.

Today's work: shoe uppers and cowboy boot tops

Shoe quarters with inlaid birds, butterflies, and flowers

More little birdies and butterflies and flowers are stitched.

I'm working on another small pair of shoes with teeny tiny birds and flowers. I'm ready to make shoes or boots for someone who's a size 12 now, please.

She exposed how the nation's poorest state spent federal welfare money. Now she might go to jail. "The rabbit's got the gun now," said a lawyer for former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, who is trying to force reporter Anna Wolfe to reveal her sources.

🧵To advocate for #PRESSfreedom is to support democracy. No threat to a journalist or news outlet is too big or too small to be ignored. An attack on one IS an attack on all; and needs to be responded to in that way. Pulitzer winner Anna Wolfe / @mississippitoday.org
www.nbcnews.com/investigatio...

My reflection art piece, titled "On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand," has gone to a new home. He's promised to love it and take care of it and allow me to visit when necessary.

I need to make more art pieces. Maybe then I won't be so emotionally attached to each one.

Shoe uppers ready to last: Denim blue kangaroo quarters with inlaid birds and feathers, navy alligator vamps

The little birdie uppers are together and ready to be put on the last. I have one more pair of shoe uppers to make before I begin lasting though.

Half the workforce in both the farming and construction industries is comprised of undocumented workers

Plus-most Americans have NEVER shown any inclination to do these jobs

If-before the election-you were complaining about the price of eggs or the cost of housing

Just wait
x.com/atrupar/stat...

Took me a bit but I've found the framing to put into words a way to express to the people fretting about the death of the UHC CEO why we just aren't heeding their admonishment:

The social contract stipulates that all life is sacred, and Brian Thompson violated it.

But it's more than that.