Creating a pattern that can change color in the Appearance Panel similar to the Graphical lines?

[jodmcc49]

I am using Illustrator 2021and there was a post about doing a hatched shadow on text and it was mentioned that by use the Appearance Panel this could be done as well as scaling and changing colors. I tried to open the Graphical Lines Pattern in the program folder to see how the pattern was made, (what size document, color mode, color of pattern, etc.), but nothing showed in the file even in Outline mode. Is there a tutorial that shows how to create other types of patterns that work that way or is it just a feature of the Appearance Panel?

Thanks

[Doug A Roberts]

Please share the post.

Pattern files are just AI files with patterns in the swatches. They don't necessarily have any content on the artboard. If you want to examine the pattern, drag it out of swatches on to the artboard.

[Ton Frederiks]

And if you want to recolor a pattern, just fill an object with a pattern and use Edit > Edit Colors > Recolor Artwork... to change the color (a new colored version of the pattern will be added to the Swatches panel).