Newbery also created the Department of Embroidery at the Glasgow School of Art where she was able to establish needlework as a form of unique artistic design.

Her works had a hint of seventeenth-century crewel-work and her designs featured floral forms with angular stems and a strong decorative quality.

At the turn of the century the Scottish Education Department issued guidance which envisaged embroidery as an important part of the national school curriculum.

"[9] And her approach was commended in The Studio magazine, for its innovation and taking everyday things and "seeks to make them beautiful as well as useful".

Together with her husband she promoted a range "novel genres", such as metalwork, glasswork, pottery and woodcarving, at the Glasgow School of Art.

[3] Newbery first experimented with a "Renaissance flavor" in her own clothing, often choosing looser styles,[2] materials such as silk velvets and lightweight wools which she embroidered herself.

[10][11] She helped to make materials for related movements, such as the suffrage banners, along with Ann Macbeth,[9] including one with embroidered signatures of 80 force-fed Holloway prisoners, which was in the mass suffragette procession from 'Prison to Citizenship' in London, 1911.

[2] After an illness Newbery retired in 1908 as Head of Embroidery at the Glasgow School of Art and was succeeded by Ann Macbeth, a former student of hers who had been her assistant since 1901.