Illustrator clipping mask problem

Question

I've made this petal and turned it into a flower:

As you can see I have a problem with the petal no 6. Half of it should overlap petal no 1. I googled that I should use the clipping mask which I did. The result is okay but not perfect (look at the red flower):

Now, I'd like to remove the fill and I followed a tutorial which suggested using Pathfinder -> Trim option. I did that and removed the fill and added a stroke. You can see the result on the green flower.

Obviously this is not the result I'm after. Is there an easier and less messy way to achieve what I'm after? What am I doing wrong? I'm a beginner with Illustrator and don't know how to solve this. I've been working on it for hours now. Please help and thanks. :)

Answer 1

The way you are currently doing it is one possible solution, but as you have seen it gets a bit tricky working with strokes, clipping masks and pathfinder.

I'll show you how I would tackle this:

1. Create your first petal.

2. Transform

Use a Transform effect (Effect → Distort & Transform → Transform...) to duplicate the petals.

Set the transform origin to the bottom and create 5 copies and a rotation of 60 degrees.

3. Edit the original shape.

Add an anchor point where the paths overlap and delete the section you want hidden.

4. Finished flower.

Simple.

By using a transform effect you can keep editing the one petal and keep the whole thing symmetrical without having to worry about re-duplicating and rotating each petal.