Veronica Flowers is a textile artist from Hopedale, Nunasiavut, NL, who is currently based in Ottawa, ON. Flowers works with a variety of materials, including sealskin, moosehide, and various furs. She learned how to sew at the age of 11 from her grandmother, well-known seamstress Andrea Flowers. Flowers’s interest in sewing grew as she and her sister Vanessa Flowers attended a local sewing circle after school in Hopedale with their friend Kimberly Pilgrim. Flowers learned how to make her first pair of moosehide slippers from her grandmother at a local sewing circle, with the help of artist Sarah Jensen. In middle school, Flowers learned how to make sealskin mittens in a life-skills class. She continued her practice, making keychains and earrings while learning from her grandmother, sister, and Jensen. In 2018, Flowers started the Instagram account vandvcrafts with her sister, where they showcase and sell their work. “We just learn from each other, give each other ideas,” she says.
She continued to make slippers and began sewing other things, such as dolls and sealskin boots. Currently, she enjoys creating tiny boot keychains, sealskin earrings, and sealskin mitts for family and friends and to sell. “Mostly, I use the same styles that my nan taught me. So, same materials and the same style,” she says. [1] She often creates traditional black-bottomed sealskin boots, a style that features a specific waterproof stitch, which she learned how to make from her grandmother. Though Flowers creates her work mostly as gifts and to sell, her work was featured in the 2019 exhibition Nunatsiavut: Our Beautiful Land at La Guilde in Montreal, QC, and in 2023 her mittens were part of the fashion show at the Northern Lights trade show in Ottawa.
A key element of Flowers’s practice is teaching workshops. She has facilitated several sewing workshops with her sister, both online and in person, as part of various conferences as well as through organizations like the Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador. In 2024 she started the Inotsiavik Language and Culture Centre in Hopedale, a youth-led organization dedicated to Inuttut language and cultural learning, with her siblings and Kim Pilgrim. There, she runs sewing workshops, often teaching people how to make sealskin uppiks online. “It’s really fun. It’s a good way for people to learn if they’re just starting out sewing…it’s a really good project,” she says. Along with her siblings, Vanessa Flowers and Nicholas Flowers, and Pilgrim, Flowers ran three kamek-making workshops where they taught people how to make black-bottomed sealskin boots. The first was in Nain, Nunatsiavut, NL, in 2023, in Hopedale in 2024 and Makkovik, Nunatsiavut, NL, in 2025. “We love teaching people how to make them. It’s a very specific stitch with the kamek, because you use the waterproof stitch,” she explains. In 2026 and 2027, Flowers hopes to run workshops in the other two Nunatsiavut communities.
Flowers is happy with her practice now—creating work, being a vendor at markets, and facilitating workshops—and hopes to continue. “I kind of just like where I’m at now …I like to keep it low key,” she says.