In honor of International Women’s Day, we’re featuring this article about the WBI Quilt collab from the Women’s Brick Initiative, who have since brought this concept to LEGO conventions around the world.

Today we commemorate International Women’s Day, and there is no better way to do that in my mind than featuring this amazing LEGO quilt by the Women’s Brick Initiative (WBI). This brick-built quilt was first displayed at BrickCon Online 2020, helmed by Daneen McDermott (@Brickwyrm on Instagram). More than 35 women (and allies) from three continents sent in over 220 LEGO squares to create the WBI BrickCon Quilt.

Women’s Brick Initiative (WBI) BrickCon Quilt, 2020

We talked with Daneen to get to know more about her and this incredible collaborative work:

Inez Vasquez: The quilt is amazing! Before we jump into that, could you tell us something about yourself and your LEGO journey?

Daneen McDermott: My name is Daneen McDermott; I’m on Instagram as Brickwyrm. I live in the Seattle, WA area of the US. As a kid, I only had a few LEGO sets (what I could afford with my allowance) but constantly played with the huge LEGO bin my next-door neighbors had. So I was immediately into building my own creations.

I really started acquiring LEGO sets of my own in college, when the Forestmen and Classic Castle sets came out. As life got busy, my LEGO purchases ebbed. But whenever I found my work life wasn’t satisfying creatively, I kept coming back to acquiring more LEGO. Most AFOLs call it their Dark Ages, for me it feels like periods of very, very dark gray. But I was always building alone. I never found the AFOL community until 2019.

Inez: What inspired you to create the WBI Quilt?

Daneen: The short answer? Community. But really it was the confluence of three things: Community, DOTS, and an overly large collection of 6x6 plates.

Just before the lockdown in March 2020, I was able to attend and enjoy Bricks Cascade in Portland, where I joined in Women’s Brick Initiative’s (WBI) big duck collaboration modeled on the 2011 LEGO employee gift set. At the same time, the DOTS sets came out and many of the patterns you can make with the quarter-round tiles reminded me of quilts of my mother’s and grandmother’s.

That summer, while I was collecting 6x6 plates for a completely different project, I kept hoping WBI would announce a cool collaboration for BrickCon (my local con). As the con deadline started approaching, I realized with my graphic design background, I could digitally assemble a quilt if I got a variety of same-size images. So I sent the idea out to the WBI members, if they’d be interested in a quilt collaboration. The response was overwhelming.

Inez: Could you provide us some detail on how you made the quilt? (i.e. How many squares were there in all? How long did it take? What program did you use?)

Daneen: I set a deadline about a week ahead of the con’s MOC submission deadline to allow time to put everything together, and for the first quilt, I needed every bit of that time. (In fact, I took a whole day off work to finish it up.) I spent between 6 and 30 minutes in Photoshop with each photo—unifying the size, cropping, color balancing, and assembling into the bigger picture. While this took some time, it gave me the chance to find lots of new and interesting techniques and discover a whole bunch of really interesting parts.

Inez: How did the experience of making such a collaborative work make you feel towards the LEGO community?

Daneen: It’s been amazing. So many talented builders! I constantly hear how addicting quilt square creation can be. In fact, when my sister came for a visit last fall, I showed her what I was doing, and now she has joined the AFOL community and is always the biggest contributor to my quilts.

After the first quilt was displayed, I got many requests for more quilts. So I made a Fall/Halloween quilt, a second WBI quilt themed on Yule (displayed at Brickworld Virtual in December), and will reveal an exclusive rainbow quilt for WBI in the June 2021 issue of Brick Journal.

Inez: Will you be making any more quilts in the future?

Daneen: I’d hoped to do many more quilts, but I’m just starting a new job and have gotten quite busy. I know I can’t stay away from it, so I’m sure I’ll be starting another. Still, I’m happy to see others take this LEGO Quilt idea and enjoy it. I know both London AFOLs and ZALUG (South Africa) were inspired to create their own quilt collaborations based on my “standard” which puts LEGO quilt creations across five continents.

London AFOLs “Quilting Bee Quilt — London AFOLs “Quilting Bee” Quilt

The WBI BrickCon Quilt is a beautiful example of how LEGO brings all of us together, particularly in these times when we are forced to be apart. It is truly a work of art and a celebration of the creative spirit of women and ally builders across the globe.

The image below (as seen on desktop computers) is comprised of six smaller sections of the WBI’s BrickCon Quilt that you can click on to zoom in to see more detail.

As a final bonus, there is nearly a full A-Z list of items hidden in the WBI BrickCon Quilt, which creates a fun game. How many can you find?

Best of BrickNerd—Article originally published March 8, 2021.

What virtual LEGO collaborations have you been part of? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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