Pattern Suites: Around the House — Two of Wands

A Complete Guide to This Captivating Design Collection

There is something deeply satisfying about a home that tells a story. Not the kind of story that shouts from every corner, demanding your attention with loud colors and competing motifs, but the quieter kind — the kind that reveals itself gradually, in the careful repetition of a motif across a quilt block, in the way a border print echoes the main fabric, in the harmony of colors chosen with patience and intention. That is precisely the feeling that the Around the House collection from Two of Wands brings to any sewing room, and it is why this pattern suite has captured the hearts of so many quilters and home sewists looking to bring something genuinely beautiful into their everyday spaces.

Whether you are a longtime admirer of Two of Wands or you are just discovering the brand for the first time, this guide is here to walk you through everything worth knowing about the Around the House pattern suite — what makes it special, how to approach the projects, what to consider when choosing your fabrics, and how to make the most of every pattern in the collection. Pull up a chair, pour yourself something warm, and let’s talk about it.

What Is Two of Wands?

Before diving into the collection itself, it helps to understand the design philosophy behind the brand. Two of Wands is the creative studio of Ashley Collett, a designer whose work sits at an elegant intersection of modern minimalism and timeless warmth. Her patterns have a distinctive quality: they feel both fresh and familiar, the kind of designs that look at home in a contemporary farmhouse, a cozy cottage, or a beautifully curated apartment without looking out of place in any of them.

Ashley’s approach to pattern design tends to favor thoughtful construction — patterns that are satisfying to sew because they reward careful cutting and precise piecing, but that are approachable enough that sewists at a variety of skill levels can feel confident working through them. Her color sensibility leans toward soft, lived-in palettes that age gracefully and complement rather than compete.

The Around the House suite reflects all of these qualities. It is a collection of patterns designed to work beautifully together, to fill a home with handmade pieces that look intentional and cohesive whether you make one or make them all.

The Around the House Collection: An Overview

The Around the House pattern suite is built around the idea of making your home with your hands. The collection encompasses a range of projects designed for different rooms, different functions, and different skill levels, all unified by a shared aesthetic language. When you work through several patterns from the suite, you begin to notice how the design elements speak to each other — the way a particular block proportion reappears in a different context, the way a finishing technique shows up consistently across projects, giving everything a quietly polished look.

What sets this suite apart from a simple collection of individual patterns is the way it was conceived as a whole. Ashley Collett didn’t simply group a handful of separate designs under one name. She built the Around the House suite with an eye toward how the pieces would coexist in a real home. A lap quilt and a pillow cover from the same suite, made in coordinating fabrics, feel curated rather than coincidental. A set of table linens and a kitchen piece, worked in the same palette, transform a space in a way that individual purchases rarely do.

This is the real value proposition of a pattern suite: it does the creative heavy lifting of cohesion for you, so you can focus on the joy of making.

The Individual Patterns: What to Expect

Each pattern in the Around the House suite brings something distinct to the table while remaining harmonious with the rest of the collection. Here is a closer look at what you can expect from the various projects included.

Quilts and Quilted Pieces

The quilted projects in the Around the House suite are perhaps the most likely to stop a scroller mid-feed, and for good reason. Two of Wands quilts have a particular visual quality that photographs beautifully — clean lines, balanced negative space, and piecing that looks complex but is often more approachable than it appears.

If you are working on your first Two of Wands quilt from this collection, pay attention to the pressing instructions. Pressing directions in modern quilts are carefully chosen to reduce bulk at intersections and help seams nest cleanly, and following them closely will make a noticeable difference in how your finished quilt lies flat and how your points align. This is true across the genre, but Ashley’s patterns are especially well-served by careful pressing because so much of the visual impact relies on clean, crisp edges.

Fabric selection for the quilted pieces in this suite is worth thinking about in advance. The collection tends to work beautifully with a mix of solids and low-volume prints, where the prints add visual texture without overwhelming the piecing design. If you are building a fabric pull for one of these quilts, consider choosing one or two fabrics you love deeply and then building your remaining pull around them rather than trying to assemble a cohesive palette from scratch.

Pillow Covers and Cushion Projects

Pillow covers are one of the most rewarding quick-win projects a home sewist can take on, and the Around the House suite includes options that range from simple and weekend-friendly to slightly more involved. What they share is a finished look that doesn’t read as a beginner project — these are pieces that look intentional, that add something to a room rather than just filling a couch.

The envelope closure construction used in many of the pillow patterns in this suite is a practical and clean solution that makes it easy to remove covers for washing, which matters enormously if you actually plan to use these cushions rather than display them. A handmade home should be a lived-in home.

When choosing fabrics for pillow covers from the Around the House suite, consider the relationship between your pillow project and any quilts or other pieces you are making from the collection. Pulling from the same fabric collection or even the same fabric pull you used for a larger project ties the pieces together in a way that feels considered. Even if the fabrics are not identical, shared colorways create visual coherence.

Table Linens and Kitchen Pieces

Some of the most underrated projects in any home sewing pattern suite are the functional ones — the table runners, place mats, napkins, and kitchen pieces that get used daily and therefore get seen and appreciated daily. The Around the House suite includes projects in this category that are thoughtfully designed to be as functional as they are beautiful.

Table runners from this collection have a particularly nice quality: they scale well across different table sizes. Whether you are working with a farmhouse dining table that seats ten or a small bistro table for two, the proportions can be adjusted without sacrificing the visual integrity of the design.

Napkins are one of those projects that seem almost too simple to warrant a pattern, but a well-designed napkin pattern includes the details that make the difference — the mitered corners, the finishing technique, the recommended fabric weight. Following a tested pattern for even a simple project is worth it, especially when you are making multiples and want them to be consistent.

For kitchen pieces, think about fiber content from the start. Natural fibers like cotton and linen are your friends here — they absorb, they wash well, and they soften beautifully with use. Avoid anything with high polyester content for items that need to absorb liquid, and pre-wash all your fabrics before cutting to account for shrinkage.

Choosing Fabrics for the Around the House Suite

One of the most frequently asked questions about any pattern suite is how to choose fabrics that work across multiple projects. The Around the House collection is designed with enough flexibility that you can approach it in several different ways.

The Coordinated Collection Approach: If you want the most cohesive look with the least fabric-selection guesswork, choose a single fabric collection from one designer and work across multiple patterns using fabrics from that line. Fabric designers build collections with coordination in mind, so the prints, solids, and textures within a single line are already designed to work together. This is a particularly good strategy if you are newer to quilting and home sewing and want to focus your energy on the making rather than the palette curation.

The Curated Mix Approach: If you prefer more creative control, or if you are drawn to mixing different fabric lines and sources, approach your fabric pull by anchoring around two or three key fabrics and building outward. Choose your anchor fabrics first — these might be a beloved print, a specific solid, or a texture you want to feature — and then find supporting fabrics that repeat or echo the colors in those anchors without duplicating them exactly.

The Slow Stash Approach: The Around the House suite is also beautifully suited to stash quilting and sewing, where you are working from fabrics you already own. Because the collection spans a range of project scales and fabric requirements, you can use larger yardage for the bigger quilted pieces and reserve smaller cuts and scraps for pillow covers, napkins, and accent projects. If you are approaching the suite this way, consider pulling fabrics with a shared value range — meaning similar levels of light and dark — rather than focusing exclusively on color. A collection of fabrics that are all in the medium value range, even in very different colors, can work together surprisingly well.

Tips for Working Through the Suite Over Time

Not everyone will sit down and sew through every pattern in the Around the House suite in one dedicated push. Many sewists will approach the collection over weeks or months, completing one project, then returning to the suite when inspiration strikes or a particular need arises. Here are a few thoughts on making that approach work well.

Pre-cut fabrics for multiple projects at once. If you have chosen a fabric pull for the whole suite or for several projects within it, cutting for multiple pieces in a single cutting session saves time and ensures that fabric is available when you are ready to sew. This is especially useful for fabrics you are using as accents or backgrounds across several projects — cut all the pieces you will need at once rather than returning to the bolt or the fabric pile repeatedly.

Keep a project log. As you work through a suite over time, it is easy to forget what decisions you made for earlier projects — which seam allowance you used, which backing fabric you chose, how you finished the edges. A simple project log, even a few notes in a notebook or a folder of photos on your phone, helps you maintain consistency across the suite.

Embrace small finishes. One of the joys of a suite like Around the House is that it offers projects of varying sizes and complexity. When you are between larger projects or feeling creatively depleted, a single afternoon spent on a set of napkins or a pillow cover is a legitimate, satisfying contribution to the suite. Small finishes build momentum and add up quickly.

Why Handmade Home Goods Matter

There is a broader conversation worth having about why anyone would choose to make home goods by hand when the market for machine-made textiles and home accessories is so vast and relatively affordable. The answer is different for every maker, but a few themes emerge again and again.

Handmade home goods have a quality that mass production simply cannot replicate: they carry time. Every stitch represents a moment of attention, of intention. When you make a quilt and put it on your bed, or sew a set of place mats and set them on your table, you are not just adding an object to your home — you are adding your time, your choices, your hands. That changes the relationship you have with an object in ways that are difficult to articulate but immediately felt.

There is also something to be said for the specificity of handmade goods. A quilt or a table runner you make from a pattern suite like Around the House is made in your fabrics, for your home, in your dimensions. It fits your table, suits your color palette, coordinates with the things you already love. No manufactured product, however beautifully designed, can offer that.

And then there is the simple pleasure of the making itself. The time spent sewing a home good is not a means to an end — it is its own reward. The focused attention, the satisfaction of a seam pressed flat, the delight of seeing a block come together: these are reasons enough.

Getting Started with Pattern Suites: Around the House

If you are ready to begin, the best place to start is with the project in the suite that excites you most. Do not talk yourself into starting with the simplest pattern if what you really want to make is the quilt. Motivation is a resource — use it.

Once you have selected your starting project, read through the entire pattern before cutting a single piece. This is advice that appears in nearly every sewing guide ever written, and it is still ignored constantly, because it feels like it slows things down. It does not slow things down. It prevents the particular kind of frustration that comes from discovering on step seven that step two required something you did not prepare.

Gather your materials, prepare your fabrics, and trust the pattern. Good patterns from thoughtful designers are road-tested and refined. Follow them closely, especially on your first pass through a new technique or construction method, and adjust from that informed position on future projects if you find something that works better for you.

Most importantly, make something for your home and put it there. Use it. Wash it. Let it get a little worn in at the edges. A handmade home is not a curated gallery — it is a living place, and the things you make for it deserve to live there fully.

Final Thoughts

The Around the House pattern suite from Two of Wands represents the kind of thoughtful, cohesive design work that makes pattern suites worth seeking out. It offers a range of projects that fill a real home with beautiful, functional, handmade pieces, all speaking the same aesthetic language. Whether you are drawn to the quilted projects, the table linens, the cushion covers, or all of the above, the collection has something to offer every kind of home sewist.

The best thing about a suite like this is that it grows with you. The first project you finish will make you want to start the second. The second will have you pulling fabrics for the third. Before long, your home will hold something made by your hands in nearly every room, and every time you set the table or fold a quilt or sink into a cushion, you will feel the particular, quiet satisfaction of a home you have made with intention.

That is what Around the House is really about. And that is more than enough reason to begin.