You’re liable to run right by Jimmie’s Reweaving & Alterations and never notice it. The little house sits so subtly at 2218 Richmond Avenue that you best Google its exact location before going there.
Here, understated would be an understatement and this goes for the inside of the shop as well as the outside.
A few years ago, I took one of my husband’s suit jackets there. Ashes from his cigar had burned a hole in the sleeve. The jacket came back with no sign of the mishap and I’ve been returning ever since.
Here, understated would be an understatement and this goes for the inside of the shop as well as the outside.
The owners, Anna and George Flores (a Vietnam vet) have been serving customers at this location since 1995. However, Anna’s parents originally started the business. Her mother was a weaver, her father a tailor.
In 1960, Carmen and Alexander Jimenez opened Jimmie’s Reweaving on South Shepherd. After Alexander died, Carmen kept the shop going until her death in 1994. One year later, Anna and George decided to re-open it at the new location on Richmond.
So how come the name Jimmie I wondered. “My father-in-law was in WWII,” George Flores says. “When his Sergeant couldn’t pronounce his name correctly (sounds like He-man-es), he started calling him ‘Jimenez’ then finally, just ‘Jimmie’.”
Clothes Saviors
The shop has two tailors and two weavers. What’s the difference? A tailor uses a sewing machine to make alterations. Weavers use a needle to mend and reweave. Pure handiwork.
All four are gifted, especially Ophelia, who weaves and can also crochet, re-knit and needlepoint. “On a garment with a stray thread, she can take that thread and run it back through so that it doesn’t look like it was ever pulled,” George Flores says.
Ophelia has worked her magic on out of the ordinary stuff too. Like a cocoa colored purse that’s older than me, a straw bag that’s survived airports and numerous trips to the beach and a straw hat so worn that my hair finally poked a hole through the top.
Amazingly, she’s even used her weaving skills on an ivy plant that continues to grow up and over her desk.
As George Flores explains it, there are two kinds of weave — over and French. For holes larger than 1/8th of an inch you have to do an over weave, which means material is woven into the back. For ones 1/8 of an inch or smaller, you can only do a French weave, which is more delicate. Every thread is woven back into the garment individually, which explains why the hole in my husband’s jacket vanished.
George Flores claims that re-weaving is a dying art. Why? “Because the younger generations just aren’t taking it up,” he says. “It requires good eyesight, a lot of patience and a steady hand."
Apparently, in some places, the art is a closely guarded secret.
“In Monterrey,” George Flores says, “there a lot of weavers but they won’t teach it to anyone unless they’re in the family. Once it runs out of the family, it’s over.”
The little house sits so subtly at 2218 Richmond Ave. that you best Google it before going there.
