Honestly, I don't think the vertices on the seams are that close together. I went all around the edge of the boot, selecting the vertices on the outermost edge. I pulled them out a good distance, and still got the same effect. In a few spots, I found places where I had to blow up the vertices five or six times to see that what I thought was one vertice was really two, but I fixed those prior to posting this thread. I keep going back to the seams, blowing up the vertices to see if I'm missing something, but nothing is showing up. I took my texture map that I had so far and added a little color to it to see what might be happening. This is what I got.