You mentioned SVG patterns and that you were having difficulty finding programs that used them. Jasc Web Draw 1.0 for Windows also implements SVG Patterns. http://www.jasc.com/products/webdraw/
You can download a trial version from the Jasc website (or you can be a little bit sneakier and skip the registration process by going elsewhere ftp://ftp2.jasc.com/pub/ I think this the link for Web Draw ftp://ftp2.jasc.com/pub/wdw102ev.exe )
I've dumped a copy of the patterns.svg file in this folder http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/inkscape/jascwebdraw/
SVG Patterns http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~horkana/inkscape/jascwebdraw/patterns.svg
Hope that is of use.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
PS this is a new post,sorry I couldn't maintain the thread