Now what?

I've been working on my Dahlia Cardigan every week at Knit Chat for quite a while (Since September) and now I'm not sure where to go.  I've known all along that I don't care for front of the cardigan as written so the plan has always been to change it.

The cardigan is constructed in a strange way.  First, you knit a lace medallion in the round.

Then you knit two long strips that border the top and bottom of the medallion.  The strips are knit out from the center, so that you have live stitches on the left and right sides.

As written, after knitting the strips, you take the left and right side stitches all onto one needle and knit flat for a long time creating the draped rectangular fronts.  The sleeves are done as afterthought sleeves.  Meaning that as you knit, you put waste yarn in where the sleeve opening will be and later pull the waste yarn out and knit the sleeves from the live stitches.

Because I wanted to be able to try it on as a worked the fronts, I put the sides on waste yarn and knit the sleeves on first.  That way I would know how the fronts hang.

Now I've got both sleeves done (and the seams across the back have been sewn since the picture was taken) so it's time to get serious and decide what to do about the fronts.  Since it's knit sideways I can't just steal the front of another cardigan that I like.  I'm thinking some combination of strategic short rows and decreases can get me to a more traditional cardigan look.  I think I'm just going to "try stuff" and see what happens.