I am assuming you are referring to channel locks ... Well yes that would work provided you are doing an up down cross hatch and doing it as an all over and your quilt is nice and square and loaded in perfectly square. Of course every time you were ready to quilt your next line in the grid you would have to release the channel lock, place the machine head where it needed to be, put down your needle to hold the machine head in place then retighten, or engage your channel locks. A real pain for your up down ones when you are only quilting in about 18" to 20" of space depending on your throat size. Much easier to use a ruler.;)
If you are doing a cross hatch on point (diagonal) you can't use the channel locks and it would not be feasable to use them if you are only doing cross hatching as a background fill.