Rory Evans, Contributing Editor

It was the late 70s, and my mom never got around to making my older sister Andrea and me some velour shirts. She had the pattern, and the fabric, and had gone so far as to cut out all the pieces ... but then they just sat there, on the top of a basket in her sewing room, for more than a decade. (It bears mentioning: In one short afternoon, she mysteriously had no problem whipping one up for my oldest sister, Stephanie, who insisted on wearing it to a seventh grade dance.)

As such, "velour shirts" has become shorthand in my family for the kind of unfulfilled promise and disappointment that results from my mother's procrastination. To be fair: She is easily the most multitalented person I've ever met--she can fix a toilet! Wire a lamp! Watercolor! Tailor clothing! Cook! Bake her own bread! Ice a cake with roses and basketweave! Draw! She has in her the cleverness and ingenuity of a Swiss Army Knife when she's so inspired to call them up ... but in the meantime, she'll be downstairs at the dining room table, reading the Boston Globe, doing the crossword, and cooking her breakfast oatmeal in--I couldn't make this up--a slow cooker. It's just entirely likely that being the mother of four kids born within 10 years and taking care of the pressing day-to-day stuff robbed her of some of her giddyap-and-go for the less important stuff (a category that "velour shirts" might fall under, in her estimation).

Years ago, she saw Roz Chast's "Bad Mom Cards" (Collect the whole set!) in The New Yorker and doodled one for herself. She faxed it to me: #72, Alice E., sitting in front of her Elna sewing machine, hoisting a martini glass (giving up drinking is one thing she actually didn't procrastinate).

(See? I said she could draw.)

As an aside--just to show how much she looks like this drawing, I am compelled to include this drawing that I did of her when she was pregnant with my little sister Alex, in 1976, P.V. or, pre-velour shirts.

And now, I find myself totally pregnant.

And here is both my worst fear and readiest assumption: That the second this kid steps out, I'll suffer from my own strain of velour shirts--that I'll be so overwhelmed by the day-to-day that I never make anything again, I'll start projects and never finish them, I won't be able to motivate to haul my sewing machine out, just as I finally have a little creature in my life to shower with love (of the homemade and Liberty lawn cotton variety).

So the way I see it, the clock is ticking: This isn't merely a gestation period, it is a time of relentless crafting, sewing, and felt-shopping. There are stuffies to be made. There are used play mats and Boppys to be slip-covered. There are soothies to be conceptualized, test-patterned, and sewn into being. (I should add, too, that my goal is to create an entirely second-hand, Craigslist/yard sale/DIY layette.)

I find myself in a feverish nest-feathering state--one that my husband Jamie hasn't quite known what to make of. (A few weeks ago, we had our friend John over for dinner, and he and Jamie sat at the peninsula in the kitchen chatting with me as I first cooked dinner and then cleaned the dishes, and when John offered--later in the cleaning process--to help the pregnant lady, Jamie immediately pooh-poohed him and explained, "John, don't worry about it. She's nesting." And, to be honest, my second trimester is the first time in my life when I've ever felt not just compelled to, but also interested in, washing dishes.)

How will I do? Stay tuned as I chronicle some of my various projects in the coming weeks...