I-Phone Car Holder

I can't believe it's taken this long to share this project with you.  It's not a big one, it only took one evening to pull together but it's so vital to us that perhaps some of you might need one as well.
Let me show you what I'm talking about

See the fancy contraption on the headrest?  Take a closer look.

I have a daughter who hates to ride in the car.  She cries and whines and I used to always be trying to come up with something new to make her happy, toys and mostly food meaning she snacked constantly in the car.  Add to that the fact that we  temporarily moved away from home and travel back A LOT.  Something needed to be done.At home we would often watch YouTube videos on my phone and I wanted a way to translate that to the car.  I put some Sesame Street episodes on my phone so I wouldn't be using an internet connection but she's too little to understand that she needs to hold the phone, she would drop it or push the one button so I came up with a holder for the phone.  I'll admit that it's not the most beautiful, I made it really quickly the night before a 2 hour drive.  I had always thought I'd alter it later but it's worked so well that it's stayed where I put it for months.I won't give you a full tutorial but here are some photos to give you an idea of how I created this.First I made the part that would attach to the headrest. 

I made a rectangle that was bigger than my phone and added three strips of velcro.  My goal was to cover this piece with velcro so the phone didn't have to be carefully placed, it could just be slapped on.  I used a piced of a cereal box in the rectangle to give it some stiffness and I attached an elastic loop on the back.  I made the loop big enough to fit snugly around the headrest of the car. 

To make the part that actually held my phone I made another rectangle, this one was the size of my phone.  I attached the other side of the velcro to one side and two elastic strips around each end.  I made sure the elastic strips would hold my phone snug and that they'd also sit far enough on each side to not block the screen (you can see in the photo below that I should have sewn my elastic strips on before I sewed the velcro so the velcro could cover the unsighly strip ends).

  

So now I get in the car and slip my phone in the holder and velcro it in place. Most of the time I don't detach the two pieces but occasionally it's nice to be able to.  I can't tell you how often I use this, if we go to the grocery store she's watching something, we use it constantly no matter how short the drive.  I love the peace it gives us.

Now some of you probably will mention that I'm making her dependent on TV in the car and to that I say, so what.  At least I don't have to listen to crying in that tiny enclosed space (crying in the car drives me mad).  I think parenting is all about choices and this is one I'm okay to make.  Also, like I mentioned above we've been using this for months on end and recently she's become less dependent.  More often I'm choosing to not start a video and she's normally just fine, it seems our need for this is ending.

One last note... my phone fits super well and has never come out on it's own but my husband's doesn't have a case on it and his phone doesn't work in the holder.  The strips would need to be tighter because it just slips right out.Here's the above picture again so you can take one more look at a cute girl enjoying some Sesame Street.