Trish's Tools - Straight Line Quilting and a side trip to CT

The last couple of days, I've just been practicing stitching out the design I want to quilt on the pink quilt.  I've also been practicing my free hand quilting in a straight line with the HQ so that I can outline the stars on the quilt as well.  It's not so easy for me to stitch in a straight line.  I even tried to record a traced design and have the machine quilt it for me but I didn't get the results that I wanted.  It was just a simple star I free hand drew out and recorded the tracing on the ProStitcher.  It was too hard to get it to quilt directly on the line after I traced the outline.  So, I won't be using the recording feature.

 So, I switched to practicing just free hand straight line quilting using the stitch-regulator.  Again, not as easy as I thought.  I tried using an open ruler but I kept jerking and ended up with some outdents on the lines. 

 
Finally, while going through my stock of rulers I purchased but have not used, I came across this nifty ruler I completely forgot I purchased.  It's called the Line Tamer from Four Paws Quilting but I call it my training wheels ruler.  I think I'm getting the hang of it and I can at least quilt a straight line now.  So, a little more practicing and I think I'm almost ready to load the quilt.  However, it looks like just about the time I'm ready to load the quilt, we'll be spending some time traveling.  I don't think my house guests will do it for me :-) 

 I am busy planning a quick trip for DH and I for our 20th anniversary.  We were going to fly somewhere, but decided to take a drive up to Connecticut from Central PA.  It's probably about a 6.5 hour drive to the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos but it's somewhere we've been saying we want to see.  So, that is where we will be spending our anniversary for a couple of days in the beginning of October.  Plus a bunch of other short day trips.  Can a anyone recommend other things to do in the area?  We were thinking about visiting Mystic Seaport in Connecticut as well.

Thanks for stopping by!  
~*~Trish~*~