Dress to Cardigan refashion plans

 There's a contest - The Sewing Place's Refashion and Repurpose Competition 2020 - which caught my interest. 

This is a Ben De Lisi for Principles sweater dress I bought on the sale rack at Debenhams a few years ago. Its a blue and black marl but reads as navy.

I've never actually worn it (I've tried it on plenty and tried to style it). I think the two main issues are the sleeves are only 3/4 length so I would have a warm body but cold wrists and more importantly I have hot flashes so would want to be able to take it off if I overheated which is rather impractical for a dress.

So I have several options I've been thinking about.

1 - shorten the length to make a top (ie turn the sweater dress into a sweater). Leave the neckline as is. Use the fabric cut off the bottom to make cuffs to make the sleeves full length. I would then wear it as a sweater/jumper and if I got too hot, could take it off and be wearing a top underneath. This would be fairly easy but not very exciting for the contest.

2a - cut it up the front to make a cardigan, keep the length but repurpose the fabric from the cowl to make front bands and cuffs. To make it different to my other navy/blue cardigans I could add buttons to the front so I could close it. This would be a lot more work and might need to use another fabric for the bands and cuffs if the cowl pieces don't work

2b - same as 2a but planning from the start to use another fabric for the bands and cuffs. Turn the cowl section into a cowl scarf which can be worn with it if wanted.

I think 2b is my favourite, I'm envisioning black bands and cuffs and antiqued silver buttons.

What do you think?