A study examined conversations of 10 "avid" female quilters from around the United States who communicate via e-mail. Results indicated that their conversations reveal ways in which they are using this modern technology in the construction of their feminine quilt artist identities. While most of the e-mail was devoted to the business of quilting (sharing techniques, books reviews, providing feedback on projects), a certain amount was devoted to subversive responses to the dominant culture--both the dominant art culture and the dominant male culture. The quilters' extra-literacy practices seem to have implications for the composition classroom. Findings suggest that these quilters appropriate literacy practices to express "domestic" concerns in much the same way that students in the composition classroom would appropriate them for academic concerns: having conversations to make knowledge; collaboration; and sharing the power. Perhaps educators can find a way to carry over the informal practice of literacy from the extra-academic milieu to the academy where particularly the student who is already marginalized could discover the appropriation of legitimacy and power in opposition to the majority discourse, thus transforming a "student who writes" into a "writer who happens to be a student." (Contains 8 references.) (CR)