headband

I finished the headband this morning, I think it turned out well.  But it has led to questions of exactly how long the headband needs to be.

I measured my head, right above the eyebrows and above the ears.  And then asked my sisters to do the same.  I also asked Joe if he might be able to find a way to measure his head.  But I know his resources are a bit more limited.  So I thought if everyone measured their heads I could get a good average of head size.

My goal was to make a headband that is about 23 inches long.  But chain maille is a bit tricky.

I carefully lay the chain maille out across my worktable.  As you can see it it a nice neat tight pattern.  And I am pretty pleased with the result.
But chain maille stretches a bit, well okay, a lot:

When stretched out the chain maille is significantly longer then before.  And even though Joe has a rather large head, I doubt it is 27 inches around!

So what to do??

At this point I have decided to do nothing at all.  My next step is to start working on the cap section of the coif.  From my experiences with chain maille, I am predicting that when the "in progress" cap piece is placed over a head that the links will stretch out, similar to the second headband picture.  I will start the cap and periodically test it out to see how it stretches, and exactly what size the headband needs to be.