Clone div and remove class without changing the original one

I want to clone the content of the div using jQuery, but from the copied content I want to remove the class from the original one before I use appendTo function. When I remove the class from a clone they also remove from the original one.

My code is:

$('.carousel .item').each(function(){
        var next = $(this).next();

        if (!next.length) {
            next = $(this).siblings(':first');
        }
        next.children(':first-child').clone().appendTo($(this));
        next.children(':first-child').addClass('col-sm-offset-1');

        for (var i=0;i<3;i++) {
            next=next.next();
            if (!next.length) {
                next = $(this).siblings(':first');
            }
            next.children(':first-child').clone().appendTo($(this));                 
        }

});

Please note, I don't want to remove class from actual div from where I copied the content, I just want to remove it from the copied code so that it is not included in the cloned div.