The Fabric of Life

Textiles live many lives, and are integral to spaces we call home. They often mark our first material connection, with newborns swaddled in blankets thoughtfully knitted, woven, or patchworked by hand. For hand-weaver and TOAST New Maker Sabine Van der Sande, this connection is foundational to her craft. “I love the intimacy of textiles,” she says. “You wear them close to your skin. They form the fabric of life.”

For our New Makers 2025 programme, now in its seventh year, the south London-based maker has created a selection of cushions and throws, woven on her historic nineteenth-century handloom. Inspired by archival weaving patterns, her creations are updated with a contemporary approach to colour and negative space.

Sabine’s home reflects this layered sensibility; hand-woven cushions sit amongst archival interiors books and blankets steeped in history, especially within the Nordic folk tradition. “I imagine my pieces in a kind of Swedish cabin,” she says, “with painted benches and a tiled porcelain stove in the corner.”

Having studied fine art and history at Central Saint Martins, Sabine has always pursued the intersection of materials and their past. She was first inspired by a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum archive. In particular, she felt drawn to the delicate silkwork of eighteenth-century exterior pockets, worn on the outer, rather than the inside. That same afternoon, set towards textiles, she picked up a crochet hook and never looked back. “I wanted to know how cloth was made. From there, it just spiralled.”

She bought her handloom on eBay and spent hours trawling through historic weaving patterns from the same era. Helped by her existing knowledge of art history, Sabine’s path into the craft was inevitably shaped by a fervent curiosity about its origins.

Historic weaving patterns are notated with symbols, comparable to musical scores. To find inspiration for her pieces, Sabine feeds these notations through computer software, which presents a mock-up image of what the textile will look like. “And then I can decide whether I want to spend the next week of my life making it,” she laughs. Generally, Sabine looks for patterns which could do with a touch of modernisation – increasing negative space, and using brighter or more contrasting colours.

Weaving is a precise craft, and not one that allows for imprecision. For each of Sabine’s throws, five to six hundred threads have to be individually wound. “It’s very procedural,” she tells me. “But I can be creative while working within those restrictions.”

Though rooted in discipline and detail, Sabine’s craft has become increasingly shaped by curiosity and creative play. A year ago, she became a mother to Wilfred. “He’s definitely well-swaddled,” she says. Sabine remembers his birth as a time when loved ones came together to share their own creations. “For once, I was being given other people’s handmade goods.”

Motherhood has inevitably influenced her craft. “It’s changed my conception of time, as I’ve had to slow down.” With it, she has welcomed a heightened sense of awareness and a more spirited, playful approach. Now one, Wilfred has begun pointing at everything that piques his interest. “I just keep noticing trinkets everywhere,” Sabine laughs.

This naive creativity has filtered into her practice. “I’m more drawn to the vivid colours of toys, like you see in folk painting or marriage chests.” This is evident in the pieces she has created for TOAST, realised in a vibrant palette of red and teal. When we shoot this feature, Sabine is committed to documenting Wilfred’s presence in her creative process. She has recently joined a new studio, Mother House in Lewisham, one of the first to offer integrated childcare. It’s a place that allows creativity and caregiving to unfold side by side.

The studios are positioned around an internal courtyard, and the artists leave their doors open for children to run around freely. “While some artist spaces can be competitive, it’s not like that here at all,” she says. “Everyone’s just like, ‘Well done for being here.’ It’s definitely not about getting stuff done, but about exploring that space of: what if I wasn’t making art despite my children? What if I were to include motherhood?”

There is a quiet but persistent feminist current running through Sabine’s work. She shares that she is drawn to the history of migrant coverlets in the early American homestead – hand-woven textiles made by women on simple looms, often the only outlet for creative expression or interior design in one-room homes. Functional yet deeply personal, these coverlets became the central decorative object in otherwise sparse interiors, a repository for stories and skill. Established to give a platform to handmade pieces like these, the TOAST New Makers programme also deepens our understanding of how each emerging maker is the next link in these human stories.

Before I leave, Sabine tells me about a quilt she found online, an unfinished log cabin pattern, hand-stitched and sold through an estate sale in the American South. She imagined the woman who made it, perhaps a grandmother, piecing it together from scraps of children’s clothing. At the end of her pregnancy, Sabine backed and quilted it herself, completing the work with quiet reverence. “It’s what we all watch television under now,” she says. “I keep it in the studio sometimes – it’s comforting.” Like much of her work, the quilt sits somewhere between the personal and the inherited, a continuation of care, and a way of making space for the lives lived alongside making.

Sabine wears the TOAST Patch Pocket Japanese Denim Coat, Lia Garment Dyed Boat Neck Tee, and Twisted Seam Japanese Denim Trousers.

Shop our New Makers 2024 collection.

Words by Lauren Sneade.

Photography by Marco Kesseler.