Bleeding fingers and hundreds of hours of toil. That, according to Sydney artist Christina Newberry, is what it takes to make it to the pointy end of the intricate world of high-quality embroidery.

Albert Biggs, a labourer from Sydney who enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force under the name Alfred Briggs, was 23 when he arrived in Gallipoli on August 22, 1915. Biggs, as part of the second ...