Masking and dividing issues

[EvanSV]

I am trying to prep some art for screen printing and it has an American flag in the mask and I cannot use the pathfinder tool without the flag popping up. I am trying to just get rid of the eccess parts of the flag that don't appear in the object. It was suggested on Reddit to convert it to a compound path but I keep getting the error "Can't make a compound path. A compound path cannot combine a clipping mask with an ordinary path."

I have also tried expanding. The second image is a screenshot of what happens when I expand it.

Side note: it is already converted to outlines.

[Doug A Roberts]

What do you want to use pathfinder for here exactly? Isn't the clipping mask already doing what you need?

[EvanSV]

Yea, I don't know why they recommended me using the pathfinder tool either.

[SJRiegel]

I am trying to just get rid of the eccess parts of the flag that don't appear in the object.

From your screen shots, the flag is not vector, it's an image. Pathfinder is not going to work on a raster image.

[EvanSV]

The flag was a vector but I had to rasterize it because I can't add a white stroke to it, it just adds the stroke to the vectored flag rather than the outside of the text. 

[EvanSV]

Nevermind, I just figured it out. Thank you for your help!

[Om Nath Jha]

Hi Kristina,

Would you mind sharing the solution here? It could help other users too.

Regards,

Om