Reverse enginering

Seam lines thread basted on pants

I started taking an online Craftsy class, called Jeanius. If you are not familiar with Craftsy, I can highly recommend them. The classes are very well done, the instructors are knowledgeable, you can get feed-back from the instructor and what is even better you down load the class once and can look at it  when you  are ready. This has been perfect for me because life keeps getting in the way, and I have to put the project on hold to deal with it.
The class Jeanius,  teaches how to do something called "reverse engineer" a pattern from an existing garment. You do not need to take the garment apart (in fact you should not deconstruct the garment).
I'm making two patterns, one for a pair of my husbands favorite pants and one for a friend.
My husband put his knee through his last pair of Fletcher Jones pants. Sadly, Fletcher Jones has gone out of business so we cannot buy any replacements. My friend has some beautiful linen pants she bought in Europe and that too is not practical to replace, so both are perfect candidate for reverse engineering.
 At the start, the whole garment is thread basted, to show the seam lines. Next, the lines are transferred to a piece of silk organza (this is called making a "rub-off") and then a paper pattern can be made.
I have just reached the stage where I can begin to transfer the thread-basted seam lines onto silk organza to make a so-called "rub off".
 I'll keep you posted as this project progresses.