I've seen someone use a feather trimmed down to just a rectangle with a longish stem, he said it tickled his nose if he didn't trim it.

When he wasn't doing mediaeval gigs he used a quill made from a cut up yoghurt pot. Last I saw him he was trying to work out how to disguise a cut up yoghurt pot with fletching to make it look more authentic, because it was getting harder to find a goose that didn't bear a grudge.

LTS