Welcome to the world of hand quilting! I LOVE hand quilting!
After trying a multitude of thimbles, I finally found two that I like...one for my middle finger to quilt towards me, and one for my thumb to quilt away from me. Once you get used to it, it only takes a second to slip one off and put the other one.
I use the raised edged thimble on my middle finger (#3 on this page) and TED's thumb thimble on my thumb (#4 on this page.)
http://www.thimblesetc.com/functional.html
As for the blue lines on preprinted tops...I am currently working on mine so will see when I'm finished if they washout completely...but the instructions do say that you can press the top on the backside with warm iron to before quilting to remove packing creases. So I'm not sure how much truth there is to the notion that heat from a warm transport truck will cause the lines to not wash out. The instructions for my also warn NUMEROUS times that ANY water on the quilt top will remove the lines so you have to be very careful before they are quilted to make sure nothing gets spilled on it.
I'm also including a picture of the handquilting on my last completed quilt so you can see the stitches.