Jane Hardy Miller was born and raised in California, where she eventually attended college and law school. Her mother, a home economics teacher, taught her to sew by hand and machine, beginning at age five. Jane made her first quilt in 1968, and for the next ten years, she made about one per year, inventing techniques as she went along. She practiced law briefly in Hawaii and California before moving to Miami in 1979, where she married, had two children, and finally took a beginning quilting class. She has been working and teaching in a local quilt shop since 1987.