It's kind of a pain in the ass to set up initially, and it's possible everyone but me was already aware of this, but provided they don't jack up the FC crafting requirements in the future, it is possible to fill out a FC crafting party without needing multiple subscriptions.
Trial account restrictions let you unlock crafting and join parties created by somebody else, so if you jump through the hoops of setting up a trial account or two and getting them leveled up to 10, you can unlock crafting and then plant the alts outside the FC house forever. Since trial accounts no longer expire, it means FC crafting after the initial setup is just a matter of starting a couple extra instances of the game up, logging in to the trial accounts, and then forming a party. There are some complications about running 3 or more instances of the game on a single PC, but there are workarounds or multiple systems or whatever.
Obviously if you're running a real FC with.... like... people in it, just tagging them in is easier, but it's nice to have an on-demand way to form up a party for one or two crafting things without having to run around looking for extra people if you're in a personal FC. Less pressure to gather a bunch of stuff in advance to maximize the productivity of yanking extra people in. Especially given that the expansion launch will probably make finding people with nothing better to do than /afk in stranger's workshops more difficult for a while and Shirogane could spike some of the FC craft MB prices.
TBH I couldn't find anybody saying you couldn't do it, but no confirmation you could, so I expected the whole thing to end with 'lol no' instead of the construction animation.
