Her early works were somewhat derivative of the style of artists such as her friend Hilda Cowham, Jessie Willcox Smith, John Hassall, and the Heath Robinson brothers.

From 1914 onwards, she developed her trademark style of sentimental rotund cuddly infants, which became ubiquitous across a wide range of markets: cards, calendars, nursery equipment and pictures, crockery and dolls.

[3] She illustrated children's classics such as Mother Goose (1910), Alice in Wonderland (1911), Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1914), The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley (1915), and an edition of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan and Wendy abridged and written by May Byron (1921).

"[2] Attwell's illustrations caught the attention of Queen Marie of Romania, who wrote children's books and short stories in English.

[4] The Lucie Attwell Annual was published from 1922 to 1974, its continuing publication ten years after her death being made possible by extensive re-use of images.

The response to these designs was enthusiastic and the Pottery Gazette wrote that they were "a truly irresistible range of nursery ware, altogether in advance of what was usually put before the trade."