INFOGRAPHIC SERIES - WOVEN PAPER STRIPS

Here is what looks like a simple lesson, but I can tell you, there are a few tricks you can learn from this one! To get this woven paper strip look, it would seem quite easy to take the strips and place them in front or behind the other strips, but to get this effect with just 4 green and 4 orange strips, is going to take a little magic. 

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Start with a rectangle and fill it with a color, no stroke on it.

Duplicate the rectangle so you get equal spacing between all 4. 

Duplicate a green rectangle, turn it 90° and fill it with a contrasting color. Take the 2nd and 4th strip of green and bring these to the front. Object>Arrange>Bring to Front.

Duplicate the orange rectangle with equal spacing between them.

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Take the 2nd and 4th ORANGE rectangles and copy them. Paste will come later, so just copy at this point.

Select the 2nd and 4th GREEN rectangles and make them into a Compound shape.
Object>Compound Shape>Make. This will make them act as 1 shape, you will see why shortly…

With the 2nd and 4th green rectangles selected and turned into a compound shape, go to the bottom of the tool bar and choose the Draw Inside Mode (far right of the 3 buttons)

This will activate a "clipping" around the selected rectangles. In fact this is really a clipping mask, but in a different way of getting to it, and in my opinion, easier for some types of construction like this one.

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Then PASTE the copied 2nd and 4th orange rectangles and it will paste them INTO the "clipping area"... you are in Draw Inside Mode so anything you do will appear to be inside the selected items. They may not line up so move them to the 2nd and 4th position to line up with the vertical strips.

And this is the end result! Tricky but it works great. And it may cause you to get a bit lost in the process but give it a shot.