Wrap a straight object around a sphere?

I am making a knights helmet I have the basic helmet but I need to have a cross curve around the shape of the helmet. What would be the easiest way to do that without having to rotate and move each piece of the cross. Is there a way to wrap it to the shape of a helmet.

It is called “warp”.

http://www.blender.org/documentation/htmlI/x3082.html

And…scroll down quite a bit, at the bottom of the page.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Modeling/Meshes/Basic_Tools

or use shrinkwrap then extrude it
or use retopo then extrude it normal !

salutations

For a concise description of using warp to do something similar, you can also check out arexma’s directions here:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=204294
The main difference with your project is you probably wouldn’t warp all the way to 180 and 360.