How to close this gap

Rebecca,

It is always safer to keep a backup of different stages of the artwork, especially those before you make irreversible changes, because then you are able to go back and redo.

In this case that would be the stage where you had the oval (which could (have) be(en) made with the Ellipse Tool) and the curved lines from side to side as stroke/no fill paths.

Otherwise/in any case I should prefer to redraw all the original paths as stroke/no fill paths (you can lock the Layer with the current paths and create the new paths on a new Layer above it).

While redrawing, the exact shapes and positions of new paths can be adapted to the other parts of the artwork in a better way (such as avoiding the leftmost end of the upper curved line covering part of the first H and the middle of the lower one touching the T). See suggestion for the redrawing of the curved lines and more below.

In either case, you can continue as follows:

1) Outline the strokes (Object>Path>Outline Stroke) of both the oval and the curved lines, then cut each of the curved lines within the sides of the oval and delete the middle parts within the oval, and then use the Pathfinder>Unite to get the simplest/cleanest Compound) Path possible.

2) Unlock the original artwork Layer and move (a copy of) the redrawn path from 1) into it and drag it to the right place in the stacking order between the helmet and the GATLINGBURG + HITTMAN, then Hide/Delete the original.

I should also prefer to:

3) Make a better adaptation of GATLINGBURG + HITTMAN and their blue background paths, based on a redrawn curved line (set) and with cutting out the middle part, preferably made in connexion with the curved lines in 1), see below.

Suggestion for the redrawing of the stroke/no fill curved lines:

A) Draw a curved line through the middle of the oval (it can go through the Center of the oval, and it can be made as part of a large wide Ellipse) with a shape that runs midway between the bottom of HIGHLANDERS and the top of FOOTBALL;

B) Move a copy of the curved line fro A) up to the right distance below HIGHLANDERS and another copy down to the right distance above FOOTBALL; you can use the same distance;

C) Set the Stroke Weight to the right values (one for the yellow lines and one for the blue line), then outline the strokes as in 1) and procede with 2) and 3).

I would draw this new. There is no clean way to close the circle. ANd it has too man. anchor points already.

Turn on Window > Control.

What you can do is select all the anchors at which the lines meet the circle using the direct selection tool.

Then click on the button cut at selected anchors in the control panel.

Then delete the parts of the circle that are wrong.

Draw a new ellipse, assign a fat stroke to it

Object > Path > Outline stroke

Then use the pathfinder panel (see the helpx article that Anubhav posted)

Hello @rebecca_5046,

Thanks for reaching out. Would you mind trying the suggestions in this help article (https://adobe.ly/47QqziU) and letting us know if they help?