Ok I have figured this out some. I needed to select all (first I
unlocked everything) then went 'expand appearance'. (Went back to
locking stuff so I wouldn't break it) Then I added a clipping mask
above the pattern but in the same layer. Then when I used the crop
tool it worked to crop to the small artboard and save for web and
devices. Perfect. maybe there is a different way of doing this but
this worked for me.