How to Trace Patterns from Clothing

Ever wanted a piece of clothing to fit like your favourite item? Why not trace the pattern and make it yourself! This post will show you a quick introduction to how you can copy a pattern straight from a piece of clothing.
Lay out your garment as flat as possible where you want to trace. I am tracing the right leg below:

Place the garment flat along the side seams. As you can see in the picture, the front trouser leg is smaller than the back. The shaded area in the picture on the right is the extra fabric. You need to follow the shape of the unshaded area so fold any extra fabric out of the way when tracing.

Once you've traced around the basic shape of the front, add in any details such as waistbands and pockets. You can do this easily by measuring the size on the garment and drawing it into place on the pattern. With these trousers, I was also able to pull out the pocket to trace around the pocket bag shape:

Next trace the back. As before, place along a side seam and trace. After tracing the inside leg, I had to carefully pull the fabric along to find the seam on the other side. An easier way to do this is to measure the width of the back piece on the garment then draw onto the pattern:

As with the front, measure on the garment and draw on any details.

Once front and back are drawn, you can place another sheet on top of the first and trace each separate pattern off of the drawing. Add seam allowance and construct!