Head Rest

The head rests on my otherwise very comfortable seats in my van are hard and do not give adequate neck support for long driving sessions.  I suppose it meets the safety requirements.  I made a padded sleeve to put over it to address these problems.  This is item 11 in my list.


I found a microfiber towel in forest green and moss green at Target in the auto section of sufficient size (18" long).  I had leftover pieces of  1.5" visco-elastic memory foam from the pad I cut down to fit my bed area so I trimmed it to fit the head rest width, clipped the top to form a rounded profile, and left the bottom a little long so it could form a neck roll.


I folded another small piece of foam about 4" wide in half and held it together with a velcro cable tie.  I suppose if the piece of foam happened to be longer, this would not be needed.


Next, I snipped 2 small holes thru the memory foam at the base of the head rest (with scissors) and threaded a 15" velcro cable tie about half way thru each hole, fuzzy side exposed to the outside.  

I placed the roll at the bottom of the foam and rolled it to form a neck roll and secured it with the velcro.  I suppose the velcro is not really needed on the inner portion, but I left it on.


I just used safety pins on the towel to form seams (until I get my sewing machine back, but the safety pins are sufficient).  I placed the towel evenly over the head rest with a longer tail in front and inside out.  I then used 6 safety pins to seam the front and back together with a little room for ease.

The final step was to invert the towel, slip the foam into the sleeve with the folded long edge able to wrap around the foam neck roll to the back, and then just slip the sleeve over the head rest.

Ahhhhh.  It feels very good now to rest my head on it and there is support for my neck.  Moving the whole head rest up or down gets the neck roll in just the right spot.  It will also be easy to launder.