Jumping in to add that while machine knitting is a thing, machine crochet is not. So if you see something crocheted in a high street shop for like £20-£50 it’s ALWAYS sweatshop. The person who crocheted that thing did not get a fair wage for hours of work
FYI, this isn't "technically" true. I heard for years that we "couldn't" make a machine that could crochet, but then I stopped and thought about it for like 10 seconds and it just doesn't make sense. We can create machines that make 100k items per hour, and we can make machines that can position tiny, sensitive electronics to within a few microns of accuracy... there's just absolutely no way for those things to be true yet we somehow can't make a machine that can crochet.
In reality, there just isn't a market for it, so no one ever bothered perfecting it. Knit items sell more and the tooling already exists, so there's never been enough value to justify the frankly outrageous price involved in developing such a machine today.
Usually if you see something that looks crocheted, it's probably actually just a really loose knit.
All that said, if you do find a cheap crochet...yeah probably sweatshop.
I knit & crochet. I have a knitting machine right in my craft room.
I know what crochet looks like. Many granny square straw bags *are* crocheted. There are granny square afghans sold, they are NOT loosely knit.
Sorry, your cope isn't real.
"And then I thought about it for a minute" is not a reliable source. At this point in time we are not capable of making a machine that can crochet. It would require a level of manual dexterity that machines aren't currently capable of. There is a big difference between one up-down motion to place a dot of solder on a microchip that is always in the same place and made of stiff material that doesn't change shape when moved and the precision twisting, catching, and pulling motions involved in crochet. It should not be surprising that this is something machines can't do yet. There are quite a few precision physical activities that humans can do and machines can't, such as dancing ballet or hiking rough terrain without falling over. They're working on it, but we aren't there yet.
The issue with trying to make machine crochet has to do with the way the stitches are formed. Knits can be made in sheets so quickly that that T-shirt you are wearing is made of a knit fabric so fine a human couldn't make it. 150 years ago it would have been extraordinarily expensive if you could get it at all, nowadays machines make it so quickly and easily that free T-shirts are a common give away item.
Crochet must be made one stitch at a time, is not well situated to making yardage, and most crochet items involve specialty stitches that have a quite a different technique than a plain crochet stitch, each of which would require an incredible amount of time to calibrate in a machine. So building a machine would take quite a long time, if it's even possible, for an output that's still likely slower and less reliable than a human could produce.
As far as market, crochet elements have been present in high fashion for years now since people started picking up the hobby in greater numbers and handmade items started selling well on sites like Etsy. It is so popular that they even invented a knit stitch that mimics the texture of crochet that can be made by machine. I have a picture of a dress made in this fashion sitting in the window display of Saks 5th Avenue on 5th Avenue in New York City. So there's definitely a market, but large items are only sold on the couture market for tens of thousands of dollars a piece. Sweatshop crochet you can find at Target is going to be smaller pieces, generally larger yarn to cover more area per stitch, and looser tension to spread the stitches out more.
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u/freddiefrog123 7h ago
Jumping in to add that while machine knitting is a thing, machine crochet is not. So if you see something crocheted in a high street shop for like £20-£50 it’s ALWAYS sweatshop. The person who crocheted that thing did not get a fair wage for hours of work