Cape Nature Center uses embroidery to educate about local wildlife

Every month, Sara Bradshaw brings together two of her interests to educate visitors of the Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center.

Bradshaw, a conservation educator, shared her knowledge of local wildlife and embroidery with students Thursday night during a class called Nature's Needlers at the Nature Center.

It was the seventh class in a yearlong course that meets once a month at the Nature Center. Bradshaw began Nature's Needlers in 2020, which has a different theme each year. This year's theme is "Missouri's Winged Things."

Each month, she presents a different "winged thing" to the class. Thursday night's was a barred owl, with previous subjects being a bumble bee, a butterfly and a Baltimore oriole.

The 31 students are provided with a kit for each class containing threads, material, a picture from which to trace and a page of information about the topic for that night. Like most classes at the Nature Center, Nature's Needlers is free to attend and the supplies are included.

The quilting kit provided by Cape Girardeau Conservatin Nature Center as part of its Nature's Needlers class.Danny Walter

The class began with several students showing the quilt blocks they've been working on.

"The first time I taught this class," Bradshaw said, "no one wanted to show their work. But it's gotten better and more are willing to let the class see what they've done."

Bradshaw then began her presentation of the barred owl, including a Power Point program and four stuffed owls on display. She also played bird calls, saying the barred owl's is familiar to this area and often said to sound as if it's asking, "Who cooks for you! Who cooks for y'all."

As Bradshaw lectured, students used light pads to trace the barred owl onto the provided material. Later, their homework is to use the thread from the kit to embroider along the designs they traced in class. At the end of the year, the students will have 15 or 16 blocks they can put together to make a quilt. The Nature Center will display all the quilts in April.

Bradshaw said the students for Nature's Needlers have ranged in age from 16 to 80, with quilting experience levels from beginner to expert.

Sandy Hinton, a first-time student at the Nature Center, said she has been quilting since the 1990s and heard about the class through the River Heritage Quilt Guild, of which she has been a longtime member. She said several other members of her guild are also in the class.

"I started quilting because my mother and grandmother quilted all their lives," Hinton said. Hinton brought two of her granddaughters to the class. They were too young to participate but observed the quilting and everything Bradshaw showed them about the owls.

Renae Bartles took the class last year and said, although she didn't finish all the blocks, she enjoyed herself enough to sign up again. Bartles said she still considers herself a beginning quilter but likes learning about the different animals.

"Last year's theme was about swamps." Bartles said. "We did a swamp rabbit and a cypress tree. Also, a mud-snake, which I didn't like very much. The thread they gave us was like fishing line."

Bradshaw said she began working with the Missouri Department of Conservation five years ago. Previously, she taught seventh and eighth grade science in public school.

"I took a class here," Bradshaw said, "and told the instructors they had the coolest jobs in the world" and asked about job openings.

Eleven years later that instructor retired and let Bradshaw know, and she applied immediately and was hired in 2017, she said.

Bradshaw said that when she was younger she quilted and sewed with her mom, but stopped and didn't pick it up again until 2019, when she heard about another Missourian Conservation Center location using embroidery to teach about local wildlife and thought she could do the same. Bradshaw said she also roped her mother, a volunteer at the Nature Center, into helping teach the class.