Unlike the Montgomery sisters, who created the red high mass set, Mrs Ethel Barton lived in far less comfort; parish records indicate that she moved from time to time between what seem to have been limited or cramped lodgings; but, in the quality of her work, she stands pre-eminent among the Melbourne embroiderers whose work adorned St Peter's at this time. She supervised the embroidery guild; important commissions that she worked on included a festal white frontal, superfrontal and dossal; a red set of the same fittings; and a green frontal and superfrontal, all for Ballarat cathedral in 1923.

The festal white high altar frontal, of which this forms a central feature, was intended as a memorial following World War I and consists of five panels mounted on a ground of Wakefield brocade; the creation of the ground and the assembly was the work of a Miss Corner of the Sydney Church Stores. The source of the design is not indicated. On another occasion, a superfrontal with a pattern of roses made by Mrs Barton was designed by a Mr Charles Challen. One presumes that Challen was an Australian, an assumption one also makes about the designer of the panel elsewhere on this frontal featuring the AIF serviceman. In this central panel, Christ is shown crowned as king and vested as priest, reigning from the cross which is depicted as a tree of life. The precise source for the image is unclear, as such imagery, which is common visually, also appears in a number of significant early Latin hymns for Passiontide and Holy Week. As a regular worshipper, Ethel Barton would have been familiar with such texts in the translations in the English Hymnal.