Heather Senter, owner of Needlepoint Nest in the Mustard Seed Mall that opened in April 2026, has turned a longtime family hobby into a business serving Oxford’s growing needlepoint community. The vendor’s shop is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and game day weekend Sundays from 1-5 p.m.
Senter’s connection to Oxford began long before she opened Needlepoint Nest. As a 1996 University of Mississippi graduate with a B.A. in journalism, she has tied both her career and her family to the university.
Although Senter built a career in public relations, needlepoints and other hands-on crafts have remained a constant in her life. Her interest in crafting began in childhood and continued as she raised her three daughters.
“Even as a child, my mom cross-stitched,” Senter said. “She taught me how, I have three daughters now, and when they were born, I started smocking their clothes, so I was always kind of doing something with my hands.”
Needlepoint became more than an individual hobby when Senter introduced it to her daughters. During the extra time at home in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the family found a shared interest in the craft.
“When we were finding ourselves with a lot of extra time on our hands, they kind of picked it up as their hobby, too,” Senter said.
As the family members spent more time needlepointing together, they began to recognize an opportunity to turn their shared hobby into something bigger. The lack of a convenient local shop made the idea especially appealing.
“This idea came about, I would say, probably at the end of last year, and honestly, when we really solidified, it was during the ice storm,” Senter said. “We were all together and once again had a lot of time on our hands, and we were like, ‘You know what? Let’s make this happen.’”
For Senter, opening the shop meant addressing a need she had noticed among Oxford residents and students. Finding supplies and guidance often required traveling outside the area, making it difficult for local stitchers to get started or continue their projects.
“Oxford, at the time, did not have a needlepoint resource and, talking to everyone I know that lives in Oxford, either full-time residents or students, they say they were having to drive to Memphis,” Senter said.
Needlepoint Nest is designed to serve experienced and amateur stitchers alike. The shop offers services in addition to supplies; customers have access to an experienced stitcher who can help them navigate their projects.
“It’s a shop that has all the supplies you would need to get started on a needlepoint project and to finish it,” Senter said “We do have someone that staffs it two days a week — she’s an expert stitcher. She’s there every Thursday and Friday, and she’s a great resource, especially if you’re a beginner.”
The shop also reflects the family behind it. Her oldest daughter, Lily, graduated from Ole Miss in 2026, and her middle daughter, Eloise, is currently a junior at Ole Miss. Its name grew out of a nickname for Senter’s oldest daughter and a familiar term the family used for their home.
“My oldest daughter, we always called her Bird or Birdie, and I kind of always refer to our house as our nest,” Senter said. “It’s just one of those family things that we always say, so that kind of seems like a natural name for a business. “
Family involvement extends beyond the shop’s name. Senter’s oldest daughter has helped shape the business’s visual identity and contributes designs that connect the shop to the Oxford community.
“If you’ve seen any of our designs, we’ve got a whole Oxford Christmas Village series, and (my oldest daughter) designed basically all of our Oxford specific ones,” Senter said. “Then, we also have kind of made it a point to work with Ole Miss designers, just happenstance. I’ve run across so many graduates that are designing (needlepoint) canvases, and a lot of them are specific for Ole Miss.”
That local connection is especially visible in the shop’s canvases, which celebrate familiar Oxford landmarks and Ole Miss traditions.
Despite its local roots, Needlepoint Nest has reached customers well beyond Oxford. Senter said the response to the shop’s Oxford Christmas Village series that was released in June 2026 exceeded her expectations, with online orders quickly outpacing the inventory the store had available.
“I would say, like, 250 orders (from the Oxford Christmas Village series), and I was a little overwhelmed because we had our inventory, but we quickly sold out of it within a minute, and we had to start doing presales,” Senter said.
The response has extended across the country, with the shop using social media and word-of-mouth to reach new customers. Senter said the shop has shipped products to customers in nearly 40 states, with orders continuing to come in from across the country.
Beyond the shop’s designs and online reach, Senter has also noticed a growing interest in needlepoint in younger generations. She believes the hobby’s hands-on nature offers an appealing alternative to spending time on technology.
“I feel like the younger audience, it’s really grabbed their attention, and it seems to be something that people are gravitating towards because it’s non-technology based,” Senter said. “It’s like, OK, let’s get back to some basics. And it’s also something that can be done socially.”
Looking ahead, Senter hopes to make needlepoint more accessible to beginners through classes planned for November. The introductory sessions would teach participants the basics, with more advanced classes focused on decorative stitches potentially following in the spring.
“We’ll start off with what we call Needlepoint 101. It’s just a basic class of how to get started,” Senter said. “They would get a canvas, and the threads, and the needle, and the needle mind … — all the things you need to get started — and we would … walk them through, in a classroom setting, how to get going.”
