Did you heat-treat the quills before cutting them? You can theoretically use a burner or candle flame, but warm sand in an old crockpot is easier and less likely to burn them. It makes a HUGE difference.

The first class I took we didn't do that (among other skipped steps) and the resulting quills were utterly useless.

This is a good tutorial: http://www.flick.com/~liralen/quills/quills.html

But it is definitely one of those things that takes practice, so if you don't need to for what you're doing, there you are. :)