I'm currently using 3Gs with IOS 4.0.1. I wish to update it to IOS 5.1.1 . Do i need to update my it to IOS 6 and restore it back to IOS 5.1.1? Can anyone guide me. Thanks.

Bro... i'm also facing the similar problem... i have ios4.1 on my 3gs and unfortunately never upgraded my ios to any of ios5.x.x versions now if i wanna do it i can't do b'coz ios 6.x.x has been released by apple... i tried to save the shsh blobs before upgrading to ios6 so i din't find the blobs for ios 5.x.x....so i upgraded to ios6 and tried to downgrade to see if my device can get ios 5.x.x but failed. but i again i came back to my old ios 4.1 only... i think we made mistake by not upgrading to ios 5.x.x when it was available.... now we hav to wait until untethered jailbreak comes for ios6.x.x.......