For the .qrc approach to work, which is what we recommend, to do the following:
If you have icons/ in the root of your project, then add to your .qrc file needs to have entries like: <file>icons/1.png</file>, and then when you generate the .py file out of it, you import it in the file you want to use, and refer to the files like :/icons/1.png.
More information in https://doc.qt.io/qtforpython-6/tutorials/basictutorial/qrcfiles.html#tutorial-qrcfiles
With that, pyside6-project will pick them automatically.
The <name>.pyproject file is only a construct for QtCreator to open projects, and it's not related to pyside6-deploy