It is currently indeed the only way.
To make the cloning part a bit easier, you could use the autocreate pattern tool that does the cloning on the fly for you while you record:
http://www.renoise.c…page__p__211782
If you then think that the last pattern isn’t swell, you can then erase it and restart from the previous pattern.
It does have to be adapted for 2.7 though. (if you are lucky you need to solely change the API version number in the guided manifest.xml file that comes with the tool and it will also run in 2.7)