This Season: It’s Tulip Time in Pella

PELLA — In Phyllis Zylstra's walkout basement, there's a room filled with tubs of lace and fabrics. Sewing machines sit on her grandmother's old kitchen table.

A picture window on the west wall lights her and Jacki Craver's work — hundreds of authentic Dutch providential costumes.

Later this week, some 200,000 visitors will arrive in Pella for the small Dutch town's annual spring festival, Tulip Time, which lasts from Thursday to Saturday. In the afternoons, the Tulip Queen — a young woman from the community — and her court will be presented.

Since the 1960s, the queen and court have been judged partially based on traditional dress.

Zylstra, 61, and Craver, 62, have crafted those costumes since the early 1980s. They work two and a half days a week, year-round, to fashion the pieces.

'The last costume went out of the house yesterday,' Zylstra said Thursday. 'That's a good feeling. Now we're just anxious to see everyone in their costumes.'

The women have been working on this year's costumes for nearly a year, they said. They choose a different Dutch province or town for every festival and meticulously research designs.

Dresses are made as authentically as possible, down to ties and hooks instead of zippers and Velcro. Craver and Zylstra said they started out with little training but high school home-economics classes, and have taught themselves about Dutch tradition and dress.

Each province and town had a specific style of dress, Craver explained. Some basic components are woven throughout the costumes, but the details are specific to a certain time and place.

'Some places had more access to very nice fabrics because their husbands were sea captains who went to the far east,' Craver said. 'Some provinces were more rural, so they didn't have that access. It all depends on how connected they were to the outside world.'

This year's province, Friesland, is a northern, coastal area of the Netherlands. The style there was quite colorful, Craver said.

This year's festival will be the first with a runway show of past Tulip queens in their authentic dresses, said Allison Limke, associate director of the Pella Historical Society & Museums.

The show will be part of the festival's Dutch Demos, where visitors also can learn about Dutch dancing, shoe making and tulip planting.

Tulip Time is the historical society's largest fundraiser, Limke said. In Pella last year, $12.9 million in local revenue was generated because of the festival.

If you go

What: Tulip Time

When: May 5-7

Where: Pella

Contact: www.pellahistorical.org, TulipTime@PellaHistorical.com or (641) 628-4311