I've searched and read quite a bit but haven't really had my question answered yet. I would like to do some feathers so bought a stencil to work with until I get use to it. My question is does each plume start and stop or do they continue end to end until you've reached the end of where you want them?

Are you doing them by hand of machine? Feathers scare me. I keep trying them, but they never look like I want them do.

I'll be doing them by machine. They look so pretty and am ready to take that next step and do something other than meandering.

Find some finished quilts online, and see if they are feathered, and if they are, make the picture bigger and you can see the
answer to your question.

Just a suggestion.

machine quilting we tend to make lines as continuous as possible- as few starts stops as possible- so they are done from start to finish= there are a number of good tutorials-videos showing different ways to make feathers- do a search of 'machine quilting feathers' to see different ways they are shaped - done

i do them as one continuous many times that means back tracking in some way on the design.

I quilt feathers in several different ways. I think if you post which stencil you purchased it would be much easier to answer your specific question.

if done by machine, they would be continuous. i could not get the backtracking to look good, though. so i have tried a technique i've seen that leaves a narrow space between the plumes

Check this one for "hooked" feathers - machine-quilted, continuous, no backtracking over already quilted lines.

http://www.quiltingboard.com/t-36855-1.htm

There's a whole book "Hooked on Feathers", but I reckon you could probably figure out how it goes purely by looking at the pictures in the post I linked.

I quilt on a LA so I always try to make a plume continuous. I do a lot of backtracking on mine but there are ways to not have to backtrack over an already quilted line. If you are doing them on a domestic machine I highly recommend getting one of Diane Gaudinski's books on machine quilting. She does beautiful feathers and has loads of hints.