When I made medieval style clothes back for my reenactment group in college, I did a lot of tracing of existing items, but now that I'm making slightly fancier stuff (for SF/F conventions), it's been saving me a lot of time and aggravation to use patterns. Unfortunately it's not cheaper :( But I suppose tracing patterns that aren't quite exact is an option as well, I just have to find out where a thrift store is around me, lol.