Hey Molly,
If I get your ideas or better direction correctly, a more abstract or experimental work is wanted.
PLease check out the scene file. Please note that I have made the feather object editable (It was set to Generate> Splines (instead of Hair)
The Material goes then to the Spline.
The core idea was not to stay in the feather mode, more to model with a feather, e.g., the Camera Deformer. This is only one little idea, but should show you that you might push this all way beyond a feather.
All the best
Sassi