Purchase porcupine quills that are between 1.5 and 2 inches long. The quills can be natural colored, dyed, bleached, or a combination of these. Choose a basic woven quill design to make by either designing your own pattern or using patterns from reference materials. Purchase a piece of thin, pliable deer leather of the size that you will need for the entire plaited woven quill work to fit on.
Separate the quills by color and length. Clean the quills by soaking them briefly in warm, soapy water with a small amount of bleach added for disinfectant. Dry the quills. While the quills are drying, use the rounded part of the spoon to flatten each quill, then set aside.
Snip the pointed ends off the quills with the nail clippers. To start with, a simple two- or three-color quill woven pattern design is recommended.
Pen a rectangle shape on the fuzzy side of the deer leather that is no wider than 1.25 inches. The length of the rectangle is optional and will depend on the length of the porcupine woven quill strip that you are creating. Thread two needles and knot the tail ends of the thread.
Draw a pen mark to indicate the center of the 1.25 inch rectangle. Poke the needle and thread through the deer leather from the back of the leather piece to the fuzzy side. Lay the first quill flat across the rectangle and stitch it down. Leave a small tail part of the quill facing the inside of the rectangle, with most of the first quill length facing out.
Repeat step 1 above, with three additional quills lain flat and flush next to the first quill. On the corner of the rectangle, stitch in one quill facing diagonally outward on the leather piece.
Stitch in a differently colored quill on the other side of the halfway pen mark, next to the first quill.
Bend and flip down every other quill from the colored quill to the corner of the leather strip. Next, fold the colored quill down over the top of the three quills that you flipped and folded inward. Stitch the colored quill down on the corner by using the second needle and thread on that side of the leather.
Flip the three regularly colored quills back outwards, and the two outer regularly colored quills and the one different colored quill in. Next to where you first stitched in the colored quill, stitch in a second colored quill of the same color. Repeat steps 1 through 5, adding quills along the sides and edges and stitching the folded-over quills down until you get to the end of the length of woven quill work strip.