Hi!
It's been a couple years since I regularly used Illustrator. I have version CS4, fully updated.
I am currently trying to create a complex striped pattern to use as a fill, it consists of a solid background (with a diffuse glow photoshop effect) and then stroked stripes (from a downloaded brush pack).
The problem I am having is I need the middle section of the brush stroke (as the ends are narrower) so the brush stroke bounding box is too wide for my pattern. If I try to erase the ends, or use either arrow to shorten the stroke, it just brings the narrow end into my stripe essentially ruining the entire look.
When I apply a clipping mask, it makes everything look right, but it does not work properly with pattern swatches as it is still reading the brush stroke bounding box as the box for the pattern, which is absolutely not what I want!
I put in a screenshot below, the orange stripes consist of 5 brush strokes each (technically, I used the line tool) but I need the pattern tile to only be the maroon box section.
I hope this makes sense.
Please help me!
Thanks 
