Last week’s poll was about inventions: I found the answers intriguing.  On the one hand, this is a sewing-focused blog, so it’s not surprising that the largest amount of you voted for the Sewing Machine  as the item you would ‘invent’ if sent back in time to before it existed.  On the other hand, at least to my mind, with the possible exception of the stocking frame, the sewing machine would be the most difficult of these to recreate and invent. I’d have no problem making a paper clip, barbed wire or a spiral hairpin with some pretty basic materials, the postage stamp is a easy idea to recreate, the sandwich is a slam-dunk, I know how a printing press works well enough that I could explain it to a medieval craftsman, and variolation is a scarily easy concept. But the sewing machine? I may work with it every day, I can take one apart to some degree and put it back together and make it work, but I still couldn’t really explain to an …