Judith Steele grew up in a small country town in the state of Victoria in southeastern Australia. She learned to sew and knit as a young child, and her sewing led to many dressmaking projects that included her wedding dress and many children's clothes. She achieved the degree of Bachelor of Computing at La Trobe University in Bendigo, Victoria, and then worked for the state government of Western Australia while pursuing her passion for patchwork and quilting. Judith was bitten by the quilting bug in 1999 when her older daughter showed her a scrap-quilt pattern. After winning a copy of Electric Quilt, Judith found that designing became much easier. A number of her bargello designs have been published in various Australian quilting magazines. Bargello quilts are her primary love, but she relishes experimenting with anything that she can design using EQ8 on her computer.