How to Price Crochet Items (and Knits), With a Pricing Sheet

To price a crochet or knitted item, add the yarn and parts, the tag and packaging, a little overhead and your hours at a wage you'd accept, then add a margin. That's the price that pays you. For most handmade pieces it's well above what buyers will pay, because the hours are the cost and they're long: a worsted beanie takes about two and a half hours, a baby blanket fourteen. The useful number, then, is what the price you can actually get pays you an hour, and which pieces pay best. In the example below, a worsted beanie that sells for $35 pays $10.44 an hour; the same beanie in chunky yarn, made in an hour, pays $24.10 at the same price; and a baby blanket at $90 pays $4.61. Below is the cost of a piece, the common rules and what they pay, how design choices change your hourly pay, and a free pricing sheet.

The short version

• Materials: yarn, plus parts like safety eyes, stuffing and buttons, and the tag.
• Hours: time a few pieces honestly, from first stitch to the last woven-in end.
• Full cost = materials + overhead + hours × your hourly rate. Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin).
• Yarn × 3, the common rule, pays under $7 an hour for most of the example pieces.
• When the market sets the price, the hours decide what you're paid.
• Chunky yarn, simpler stitches and smaller pieces raise your pay per hour more than any price change.
• TaroStack keeps yarn by the skein and gram and costs every piece from what it used. More below.

What a piece costs

Fiddlehead Stitch Co., a made-up crochet and knitting maker in Missoula, Montana, I use in these examples, sells at markets and craft fairs and online:

The plush's $6.60 is yarn, safety eyes and stuffing. In every row the hours are most of the cost: 85% of the worsted beanie, more than 90% of the plush and the blanket. How to put your own time into a price is in how to price handmade items.

What the common rules pay

Yarn × 3. The worsted beanie at $24 pays $6.04 an hour after its materials; the plush at $19.80 pays $3.07; the baby blanket at $72 pays $3.33. The rule prices the yarn, not the work.

Hours × wage + materials. This is the full cost above. It's the honest price, and for the chunky beanie, at $38.75 with a margin, it's close to what a market will pay. For the plush and the blanket it's far above it.

What the market will pay. At a craft fair the price is often set by what's on the next table. So look at it from the other side: at the price you can get, what does each piece pay you an hour?

Same maker, same $35, and the chunky beanie pays more than twice the worsted one because it takes an hour instead of two and a half.

Design for the price

When buyers set the price, your hourly pay comes from how long a piece takes:

1. Bigger yarn, bigger hooks and needles. Chunky and bulky yarns cost a little more and take far fewer stitches.
2. Simpler stitches for stock, detail for commissions. Save the cables and colorwork for pieces sold at full cost.
3. Small pieces that sell on impulse. Beanies, ear warmers and small plush sell at prices more buyers pay, and their hours are short.
4. Price commissions at full cost. A blanket made to order, in someone's colors, is worth the full price, and a deposit on the yarn.
5. Know your floor. If a piece is sold below full cost, know what it pays you an hour, so it's a choice.

How much stock to take to a fair is in how much inventory to bring to a craft fair, and what a market or fair day really costs is in cost to sell at a farmers market.

Get the pricing sheet

Download the crochet and knitting pricing sheet. One row for each thing you make: its yarn and parts, tag and packaging, overhead, hours, your hourly rate and margin, and it works out the full cost and the price at your margin. Then type the price you can actually get, and it shows what that pays you an hour, so you can see which pieces to make more of. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

A maker with a yarn stash of a few hundred skeins, bought over years at different prices, can't say what the yarn in any one piece cost, or whether there's enough of a dye lot left to finish a blanket. Before a big fair, the best-selling beanie color runs out, and the hours spent on pieces that came home again never get counted.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps the yarn counted and every piece costed.

Yarn by the skein and gram. Each yarn is an item, kept at what you paid, and units convert: yarn bought by the skein, used by the gram. Each design is a recipe of its yarn, parts and tag.

Each piece at what it used. Recording finished pieces takes the yarn and parts off stock at what you paid, so a beanie's cost is the yarn that went into it, not a guess at stash prices. Margins are reported by product.

And the yarn before a fair. Stock is counted on a phone, and the reorder list works in days of cover for the yarns you use all the time, so the best-selling colors are on hand before the season starts.

Recipes, batches, counting and margins by product are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

How much should I charge for crochet items?

Add yarn and parts, tag, overhead and your hours at a wage you'd accept, then a margin. In the example, a chunky beanie costing $30.90 in full is priced at $38.75; then check what the price you can actually get pays you an hour.

Is yarn times three a good way to price crochet?

It's easy but it prices the yarn, not the work. In the example, it pays $6.04 an hour for a worsted beanie and $3.07 for an amigurumi plush.

How do you price knitted items?

The same way: yarn, parts, tag, overhead and hours. Knit and crochet versions of the same item can take quite different times, so time your own before setting prices.

Why is handmade crochet so expensive?

Because of the hours. In the example, a baby blanket takes 14 hours, so even at $20 an hour its full cost is $305, though it sells at a market for about $90.