to back or not to back

that is the question ...
For practise, I stitched a crewel design directly onto monk's cloth to
which a thin iron on stabilizer had been attached. Dianne was right --
the monk's cloth would've 'moved' with every stitch without the
stabilizer.
Plan 45.2 is to scan the transfers and then print them on to fabric made
for that purpose. This might seem like an extra step but the medium used
to create iron on ability could've deteriorated over time plus it will
be faster than tracing each design directly on to fabric. These 'tiles'
will later be stitched to the monk's cloth.
My questions --
should I once again use stabilizer?
should I machine or hand stitch the pieces down? I'm leaning towards
machine -- possibly a dense zig zag which is the fanciest stitch my
machine can do.
could I pink the edges or leave them alone for a rag look or should I
plan on folding edges under?
help!!!