Introducing Patchric concept and questions

Hello! I would like to show our concept for our first suit we are making. His name is Patchric the patchwork cat. He's going to be a partial made out of fleece.


Here he is~
He is going to have burlap vision and button eyes, a fleece nose and a moving jaw. He is also going to be built on a balaclava/foam base. We are going to make feet for him, but I have bright pink converse I can wear for the time being. His seams are going to feature hand-stitched yarn stitches in addition to machine/hand sewn stitches. The collar will be a white belt, with a D-ring added on and a silver clay zipper charm. Unless I can find a real zipper as large as I'm looking for!

With him being made from fleece and having no bulk, he's going to be close-fitting and more proportional to my own body and head. We are going to make a temporary stationary tail for him before we endeavor in an articulated skeleton tail.

Here are the fabrics we are using!

We have already made sure that the colors look good in natural sun-light and are bright and cheery and not to hard on the eyes. We want him to be a happy character and not scare people away. We are probably going to be starting on him in the next few weeks. We have been reading/watching tutorials and practicing sewing before we try, we want to make sure we do our best.

Now for my questions!
The burlap has a strange oder, it's chemically. We purchased it from Jo-Ann's so we didn't just kind of find it on the street or something. I was just curious if there was a way to get rid of the chemical smell so I have no issues wearing the head. Should the smell just go away after time?

For the arm gloves-
Is it acceptable to use simple cheap winter gloves and build off of that? The kind you can find at walmart or dollar stores for around 2-3 dollars?

This community has been of immense help in our searching for answers. Thanks everyone in advance and I am super excited to put life into Patchric!