I can only draw and quilt feathers going from the "bottom" to the "top". So on this tute...
http://featheredfibers.wordpress.com...hand-feathers/ I have to back track back to the bottom of the spine. I can do this in any direction, sideways pointing left, sideways pointing right and upside down but I always have to be going in that bottom to top form. Took me a while to figure that out. I do the "hump and bump" method which means I backtrack over every other feather. I do it on the "hump" of the plume, the blog I linked backtracks over the line between plumes. Diane Gaudynski leaves a gap between plumes and echos around them.
In addition to hooked of feathers, I suggest getting Harriett Hargraves Heirloom machine quilting book and Diane Guadynski's book Guide to Machine quilting. Both of them are pioneers in machine quilting and do exquisite feathers and have very good step by step instructions just for DSM quilters. I credit them with learning how to do them.
I quilt on a longarm but have seen some DSM quilters acheive gorgeous feathers.[ATTACH=CONFIG]391758[/ATTACH]