After trying bleach and just straight paint, I discovered deColourant from Jacquard. I love the faded look it gave my fabric during a test. Easy to use too. Just paint it on, wait 24 hours and then iron. Beware, kinda has a rotten egg smell when being ironed. 

Also did a series of embroidery tests. 
Right most bunch was done on the machine, middle was done by hand with no stretcher, and far left is by hand with stretcher. 

I obviously favored the far left batch. But then it came down to makeing sure the back looked as good as the front. I tried a variety of knots and tucks on the back until I figured out the two by the needle. The knot is hidden under the stitches. 

Not much of a fan of rigging. I can kinda do it, but I'll always let a program take the first swing at a character and prefer to do the clean up afterwards. 
Glenn was done completely by hand (never again)
Other characters were tested in Mixamo, but still done by hand because it just wasn't there yet.
But I'd heard good things from Rigging buddies about AccurRig and decided to try it out for this project. 
And, it's not bad. I needed to add some simple 'arms' to Giga Gaia, because the program didn't like the gap, but that was the only error I got. Assigning points was easy, and I liked that you could mask off points (like GG's lack of legs), so that the bones didn't get randomly assigned. Also, the weight painting on the fingers was soo clean and tight. I love it. That's my most hated part to do.
GG just needed a bit of cleanup in Maya, but I owe that to the oddness of the creature.