I hem stitch, by hand, all around my fabric edge. I love doing the hem stitch; find it very relaxing for some reason. Besides cross stitching, I'm currently thinking of giving hardanger a try.
Also, I know you can zig-zag the edge of your material, but I'm too lazy to drag my sewing machine out of the closet to do a zig-zag around the edge. And my machine is not fancy enough to do more complicated stitching.
Hem stitching works fine for me.
Adele