Gray Border and Pattern Automatically Applied When Creating Rectangle

[PhynomEagle]

Each time I draw a rectangle with a fill and border (stroke) applied, the rectangle is generated with a pattern that I previously created and this grayish blue border around the strokes of the pattern and the border. I was quickly skimming through some onlin research, and there mention of 'Rasterizing' the object. I am able to get rid of the grayish border and patter, but it seems to be applied each time I create a new shape object. What on earth have I done to my Illustrator software to cause this to happen. It never happened before, and it is impeding my workflow. Please help! I've included a screen shot. As you can see, the shape is selected and I have turned the fill and border to null, yet there is that ugly patter and border still applied.

[PhynomEagle · Accepted solution]

Nevermind! I figured it out. I guess you can apply fills and borders to the layer itself, so all objects in that layer get the treatment. I was about to go nuts!