The daughter of Juanita and Romando Vigil, Carmelita Vigil was born into San Ildefonso Pueblo in 1925. Her mother passed away when she was eight years old. At that point, she began splitting her time between her aunt Maria Martinez' and her aunt Desideria Montoya's households, a few months with one, then a few months with the other. She watched both women making pottery and learned from both, but she always referred to Desideria as "Grandma."

Like most Native American teenagers of the time, she was sent to a boarding school designed to remove her from her Native American heritage. It failed, but it was at that school that she met a San Carlos Apache student named Carlos Dunlap. After graduating, she and Carlos were married and moved to California to find work. A decade later they returned to San Ildefonso and Carmelita threw herself into making pottery. She established herself with red-and-cream polychromes, then moved to black-on-black pottery and finally to the sunrise brown that is now her family's specialty.

Carmelita was a regular participant in the Santa Fe Indian Market from 1978 to 1999, and at the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Arts & Crafts Show from 1995 to 1999. Carmelita was also a participant in the 1974 Seven Families in Pueblo Pottery show at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. She was declared a National Treasure during the Nixon administration. She won First Prize ribbons at 20 Santa Fe Indian Markets, a record still unbroken. Carmelita passed her knowledge and techniques on to her daughters, Jeannie Mountain Flower Dunlap, Linda Turquoise Lake Dunlap and Cynthia Star Flower Dunlap, and to her son, Carlos Sunrise Dunlap.