Thanks for the feed back. This was the first project that I hand cut all the pieces with a knife, rather than a strap cutter, which is a big reason the edges look so bad. You can see that the width varies wildly in certain sections b/c of my lack of skill with a knife. Consequently I didn't sand the edges enough for fear of the making it more obvious that the overall width isn't consistent. Lack of skill with a tool is a poor excuse for bad craftsmanship, but this is just the first project with a new tool (the knife I used).
I also don't dye my edges, but maybe I should start. Again thanks for the feedback, I very much appreciate it.