My experience was that some stitches will distort on a quilt sandwich when not using walking foot, even feed /dual feed. Like platyhiker says, you have to experiment.
My dealer told me that you shouldn’t use the walking foot or dual feed/even feed while going backwards so for some decorative stitches you need to go without those features. That’s when distortion can be an issue.
My machine tells me which decorative stitches can be used with the even feed. None of them go backward.