Letters from the Longarm: Channel Locks and Basting

Dear Reader,

Welcome to our new Janome Quiltmaker Pro series! We are so happy to have you here with us. Monique and I are so excited to help you navigate how to use your Janome QMP Longarm. For this installment, I want to talk about using the Channel Locks.

The ends of the channel locks are silicone for extra ‘grippy-ness’.

Channel Locks are a way to get perfect straight stitches on the longarm, and they can be used for basting AND quilting! They can be used two ways: a physical clip that is installed on the wheels of the carriage, or an electronic setting in ProStitcher software.

For the clips, you simply need to put them on either the bottom wheels of the carriage (for a vertical channel lock) or on the top wheels of the carriage (for a horizontal channel lock).

Once they are positioned, you can effortlessly stitch exactly straight lines! Think matchstick quilting, negative space quilting, row quilting and more! Isn’t that exciting? I think it’s awesome, personally.

With the top channel locks in place, the machine can only move horizontally across the quilt.

I love to use these for basting and positioning my pieced top on the batting and backing. I first use it to anchor my batting, and then it also creates a straight line for lining up the top.

Now that the top is anchored with a horizontal channel lock, I can switch to a vertical channel lock and baste down the sides of my project. This is a really effective way to line up a set of placemats or other smaller items and quilt them continuously on the longarm.

Bottom placement for vertical movement (in the throat space) only.

But wait, there’s more! (I always feel like an infomercial when I say that lol!) If you have the Janome ProStitcher (code for an amazing set of motors for computer-directed quilting) and it’s accompanying software, there are electronic channel locks built right into the software. No more lining up with a ruler or measuring tape!!