How to paste a group into a shape so that contents warps accordingly?

Question

Hi. I need help accomplishing something which I assume is pretty basic in Illustrator, but I can't seem to find any tutorial on the web on how to do it.
I made a tall and narrow rectangular shape. Lets just say 40 pixels wide by 800 pixels high. I gave it no stroke, but gave it a red fill. I copied this rectangle six times and aligned them all adjacent to one another, side by side. I gave each of the other six tall and narrow rectangles different fill colors: orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. Then I grouped all seven rectangles together resulting in a rainbow colored rectangle 280 pixels wide and 800 pixels high.
On a separate layer I used the pen tool to create a wavy-like shape, curving, zigging and zagging so that the shape is of varying widths and extends to 800 pixels high from top to bottom. I guess the shape resembles a long winding water-slide at a water theme park, or possibly a winding pillar of smoke coming out of a chimney. I hope you get the picture.
Now, what I want to do is to take that rainbow colored group and somehow insert it into that wavy winding shape. By this I don't mean like a clipping mask, but rather I'm expecting the group of rainbow-colored rectangles to warp and distort itself in reference to the curves and varying widths of the wavy shape in which it is nested.
I hope this is clear.
Thanks for any help

Answer 1

What you need is an envelope , but most probably it won't work when you just use the wavy form as an envelope. Illustrator plays by its own rules. There are some threads that discuss problems like this. Envelope will be a good term to search for.
Normally you'll have to first create a simple rectangle mesh, form that in that wavy  kind of fashion and then use it as an envelope. But some other methods were discussed here already.
You should read on envelopes in the manual first.