As per our recent conversation, I just went and associated an "old" pattern with a current user (who designed it). After changing the authoring info and hitting submit, i got an error that "main photo is required" -- I have it set that new patterns must have an image uploaded with them (don't want patterns if people can't see what they look like).

Furthermore, it doesn't look like changing the authoring information worked (it still says Spanky submitted it, not the designer).