GIMP :: Text With Multi Color Horizontal Stripes (2012)

Both here and to Gimp. Tested it a bit on and off, but the breakthrough for me was the single window mode, so now I am currently making an effort to learn something.

My first question is actually about something I am failing to do with Photoshop CS4. I create a text, rasterize it, then create the stripes via the rectangle tool (in this case I am messing with different national colors, like Germany). Now so far so god, but I never get around to actually be able to merge the strips with the text. The closest I have gotten is to see the text behind the stripes, but then the strips also covers the space between the text. I followed this tutorial for that: [URL]......

I looked at Your Sweet Candy tutorial and, excluding some steps, seems to be relevant, but for step 15, where I do not want to select stripes available inGimp, but create new ones.