Mask Making Made Easy By Rod Blagojevich In Tutorial Video

CHICAGO, IL — Former Governor Rod Blagojevich, who knows a thing or two about going stir crazy, stars in a mask-making YouTube tutorial. No sooner did Blagojevich return home to Chicago after serving eight years of a 14-year sentence on federal corruption charges in a Colorado prison, then Illinoisans were ordered to stay home to curb the spread of coronavirus.

Now that the current governor has recommended that Illinois residents wear masks when out in public, the former impeached governor is taking a break from making celebratory greeting videos for a local production company by making masks with his family for health care workers and first responders.

The tutorial video was shot in Blagojevich’s Ravenswood Manor home and was written, produced and directed by his younger daughter, Annie, who turned 17 this week.

“It’s easier than you might think, and yet it’s challenging,” the silver maned ex-gov said. “I never sewed anything in my whole life …”

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Using a pattern that his wife, Patti, found in the New York Times, Blago muddles through the gathering of materials, taking occasional jabs at the U.S. Department of Justice.

“You can’t do any of this without 100-percent cotton first and foremost,” Blagojevich said. “Second you need elastic and third, you need thread.”

Blagojevich advises viewers they can use cotton t-shirts, pillow cases or in his case, “the old dress shirts you haven’t worn in eight years for whatever reason.”

“This shirt here in particular, good quality, 100-percent cotton, that I used to wear when I was governor,” he says. “I think I remember this shirt. I think I gave a speech in it. Anyway, no more speeches for that shirt and no more speeches for me, but that’s a whole different conversation.”

He also explains his attempts to use a sewing machine for the first time and “jamming up the production line.

“My daughters and my wife impeached and removed me from the sewing machine,” Blago said. “That’s some I know something about. The first time it happened to me was wrong, but this second time was right.”

Holding up a bandaged finger, Blago admitted pricking himself with needles on the “tomato thingy” while hand sewing masks.

“I said when I came home from where I was that I’ve been bruised and battered and bloodied, and I was a little bit bloodied, but all is well that ends well,” Blago said, who was convicted for trying to sell Barack Obama’s senate seat and shaking down a children’s hospital. “I’m okay and I’m going to fight through the pain…”

Unfurling the dress shirt he ordered custom-made during his years as governor, now filled with mask-shaped holes, Blago called it a “metaphor for my political career.”

You can watch the video below.

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