Advertorial · Presented by Marlow Market · Spruce Pine, North Carolina · By Marianne Colvin

She’s quilted close to 1,200 of them in fourteen years — and never once sold one online. This is the final run.

Darlene Pruitt (69), the Blue Ridge quilter closing her workroom above the old hardware store after 31 years, has been making these woodland tree skirts quietly — to order, for people who asked. The building changes hands in January. She almost didn’t mention them at all.

Darlene Pruitt’s workroom closes in January. The building on Oak Avenue — the old hardware store, with her two machines on the second floor and thirty-one years of fabric stacked against the brick — has been sold. After that the machines go.

But the last thing to come out of that room won’t be a quilt. It’s a tree skirt.

“I’ve been putting them by for years,” she says. “Every time I needed a break from the quilts, I’d switch over to these. It was almost like a side project nobody knew about.” She pauses. “I never planned for them to be the last thing I made. They just are.”

“I’m sixty-nine,” she says. “My hands still do what I tell them most days. But my thumb locks up after four hours now, and the long winters at the machine are behind me.” She looks down at them — knuckles thickened from three decades of pushing fabric. “That’s not the whole of it, though. The work I learned this for has mostly gone. Real handwork got harder to find, and harder to hand on.”

Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Early November. The fog sits in the valley until nine in the morning, the pickup trucks come down 19E with Fraser firs roped in the beds, and the workroom smells of cotton and the coffee pot that’s been on since six. Along the back wall, stacked in careful rows on Darlene’s shelves, sit the tree skirts. Each one quilted. Each one with a doe and her fawn bedded down in the roots.

“I kept these to myself a long time. The quilts were what people came to the table for. These were just mine. But I can’t take them all with me when I lock that door. They ought to go somewhere.”

31 years of quilting — and the one thing she never put on the table

Darlene has been quilting for thirty-one years. Her mother handed down the first machine in 1995, and the quilts, pillow covers and table runners have been going out ever since — the fall craft fair circuit through the Carolinas and Tennessee, the same booths at the same shows for over twenty years, and for the last several years her small online shop as well.

The tree skirts are newer. She started about fourteen years ago, one at a time, for people she knew. She’s quilted close to twelve hundred of them since, alongside everything else. Every one passed through her hands.

“At first it was just neighbors,” she says. “Then a customer wrote and asked if I’d make her one. Then her sister. Then her sister’s friend in Ohio.” She laughs. “They found their people. I never understood how. They just did.”

It started at a fall show outside Asheville. A woman stopped at the booth and said — not even complaining, just saying it — that she’d spent eighty dollars on a Fraser fir that morning and would be wrapping an old bedsheet around the bottom of it, same as every year.

“She said, ‘I pay all that money for a beautiful tree and then I hide the bottom of it with a sheet.’” Darlene shakes her head. “And she was right. We put the nicest thing in the house up for four weeks of the year and stand it on a piece of red plastic.”

She went home and quilted the first one.

She never brought finished tree skirts to the shows. She made them quietly, to order, for people who asked twice. “They traveled by word of mouth, like everything else I’ve made,” she says. “I never had to advertise one.”

Until now. The building changes hands in January. These are what’s left — and for the first time in fourteen years, they’re available to anyone.

What makes Darlene’s tree skirt different

What sets these apart isn’t the deer, as much as everyone loves them. It’s how they’re built — the same construction Darlene has used on every quilted piece since 1995.

Each skirt is cut from a heavy cotton-poly blend — the softness and breathability of cotton with the durability and easy care of polyester — layered around a firm wadded interior and quilted all the way through. That’s what gives it weight. It lies flat the day you take it out of the box and it still lies flat in year ten. No curling at the edges, no rucking up when someone walks past.

The woodland scene is quilted into the panel, not printed onto it. The roots, the moss, the pine cones and the rocks have real dimension — you can feel them under your hand, and the light from the tree catches in the stitching after dark. Nothing to peel, crack or wash off. It’s part of the fabric.

And it’s 48 inches across. That matters more than people expect. “Most of what you can buy is thirty-six,” Darlene says. “I measured the stands. At thirty-six inches the legs stick out the sides and you’ve solved nothing.” Forty-eight inches covers the stand entirely and still leaves a wide, deep border for the presents to sit on.

The center opening is 4 inches — wide enough to drop over any standard stand post, narrow enough that you’re not looking down into the water basin. A strip of hook-and-loop runs the length of the slit, so the skirt closes behind the tree and the seam disappears. “You press it shut and walk away,” Darlene says. “Nothing to come undone when somebody’s rooting around under there on Christmas morning.”

“The whole point was that the tree should look like it grew there. The roots on the skirt run right up into the trunk. You shouldn’t be able to tell where one stops.”

The part of the tree nobody photographs — and everybody sees

Ask people about their tree and they’ll tell you about the lights or the ornaments. Nobody mentions the bottom three feet. But it’s the first thing you see from the doorway, it’s what the grandchildren sit on, and it’s where every present in the house ends up.

It also takes the beating. Needles, water from the stand, the dog, the cat who thinks the whole thing was put up for her. “A good skirt does two jobs,” Darlene says. “It catches everything that falls, and it looks like something while it’s doing it. There’s no reason it can’t do both.”

The cotton-poly blend takes a shake-out over the porch rail and goes back down. Spills wipe off the surface rather than soaking straight through.

“I’ve got customers on their twelfth Christmas with the same one”

Darlene pulls a cookie tin out from under the worktable — the same one she’s had since the nineties. Inside are cards and photographs from customers. She slides out one that came last January.

“Dear Mrs. Pruitt — this is the twelfth Christmas with the tree skirt you made me. My grandchildren are the second set to sit on it. My daughter has asked me twice now what happens to it when I’m gone, which I take as a compliment. The tree changes every year. That doesn’t. I just wanted you to know.”

“That’s what I wanted,” Darlene says. “Not something you put away because it’s too nice. Something that’s out every December and lasts long enough to be argued over.”

Three designs from Darlene’s final collection

What you get

• Real quilted construction. Cotton-poly face, wadded interior, quilted all the way through — not a printed felt circle. Lies flat out of the box and stays flat.
• The scene is stitched, not printed. Roots, moss, pine cones and rocks with real dimension you can feel. Nothing to peel, crack or wash off.
• 48 inches across. Covers the whole stand — legs included — with a deep border left over for presents. Most skirts are 36 inches and leave the stand showing.
• 4-inch center opening. Drops over any standard stand post. No looking down into the water basin.
• Closes behind the tree. A hook-and-loop strip down the full length of the slit. Press it shut and the seam disappears — nothing to work loose.
• Three designs. Woodland, winter, and the one with the wrapped presents quilted into the scene. Same construction, same size.
• The scene wraps all the way around. No front and back. It reads from every side of the room.
• Built to come out every year. Shake it out over the porch rail and put it back down. Customers are on their twelfth Christmas with the same one.

Darlene’s final run — limited quantities remain

SEE WHAT’S LEFT — $54.95

$79 Free U.S. shipping · Ships in 2–3 days

What customers sent in

• Hand-quilted
• Free U.S. shipping
• 30-day returns
• Secure checkout

She’s set a flat close-out price: $54.95, down from the $79 she’s always charged for one made to order. “I’m not doing this for the money at this point,” she says. “I want them under trees that’ll actually get used. Not folded in a closet waiting for the right year.”

Her granddaughter Macy (21), home from Boone, and her grandson Cole (17) are helping her photograph and pack the last of them. “Macy says the deer look like they’re waiting on somebody,” Darlene says. “I thought that was about right.”

Fourteen years she kept these to herself. These are the last ones she’ll make. Thank you, Darlene.

This page is a paid advertisement published by Marlow Market. Hearth & Heritage Review is a branded content format, not an independent news publication, and the account above is presented as told to the advertiser. Testimonials reflect individual experiences and results may vary. Images are for illustrative purposes; because each piece is finished by hand, the product you receive may vary slightly. Tree, stand and decorations are not included.