In 1916, members of the Green Island branch of the New Zealand Red Cross took 60 small pieces of calico and, with red wool, decorated them with birds, ferns, British bulldogs and brief messages - as well as their names.
The messages included: "Good luck to our boys", "Every winter turns to spring", "Noble by birth, yet nobler by great deeds" and "There is no safer place than the path of duty".
The pieces were then stitched together and sent to England.
The quilt was returned recently to Dunedin and Otago area manager for Red Cross, Karen Clements, has been piecing together information about where the quilt has been in the intervening years.
It is marked with the words "Wispers School", which was a girls' school in Surrey.
Ms Clements and her Red Cross colleagues suspect the school building might once have been used as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers.
The quilt was returned to New Zealand thanks to an Essex woman, Doreen Price.
Ms Price inherited it from her older sister, who died in 1952.
She passed the quilt on to the Red Cross with a letter.
"This quilt has been among my possessions for 50 years. It is now time for it to come back home. I have loved it. The emotion and love worked into its panels make it a beautiful thing."
Ms Clements describes the quilt as "an historical document" and she would like to hear from any descendants of the quilt makers.
She plans to display it at Red Cross headquarters in York Pl.
The organisation no longer has a branch at Green Island.
