About

Oliver Hargreaves opened Stitch Soar in the autumn of 2011 in a rented room above a hardware store on South Broadway in Phoenix. The first few months were slow. Mostly trouser hems and a few suit jackets brought in by people who'd seen the hand-lettered sign in the window. He had one industrial Juki machine, a dress form that listed slightly to the left, and a pressing table he'd built himself from a hollow-core door and two sawhorses. The work was steady enough to keep going, and by the second winter he'd taken on his first custom suit commission.

The turning point came in the spring of 2014, when a local theater company needed twelve period costumes altered to fit their cast in under two weeks. Oliver said yes, stayed late every night for ten days, and finished on time. Word got around. By 2015 the shop had moved into its current space, a proper ground-floor workroom with natural light and enough room for a second pressing table. The clientele grew to include brides, musicians, a handful of local politicians who needed suits that photographed well, and a steady stream of people with beloved garments they couldn't bear to throw away.

Today, fifteen years in, Stitch Soar is still a one-person operation by design. Oliver takes on a volume of work that lets him give each garment real attention, which means there's sometimes a wait. He closes the first Monday of each month to do a full workroom deep-clean and machine maintenance. It keeps the equipment running well and the space honest. If you've got something that needs fixing or something you want made from scratch, the best first step is to get in touch and describe what you're working with.