Homemaking expert Katie Brown is Midwest's answer to Martha.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Katie Brown's world is not a perfect one.

If the pie filling oozes out or the bows on the chair backs are a little lopsided, it's no big deal. Homemade things should look that way, she insists. "It makes it so much more human and so much more special."

Brown is a rising star in the growing galaxy of home-arts gurus, but she didn't get there by presenting herself as a know-it-all. She brought a friendly, approachable style and a willingness to make mistakes to "Next Door With Katie Brown," her former show on the Lifetime television network, and she's now spreading her keep-it-real philosophy with the book "Katie Brown Entertains" while preparing to launch new programs on HGTV and the Food Network.

Brown is Martha Stewart without the pretensions, a hip homebody with tousled hair and a wide smile who seems like someone you'd like as your best girlfriend. "I'm so not sophisticated," she admits with her easy laugh during a phone interview from New York.

It's something she jokes about, but it's also a source of pride. She revels in her Midwestern roots and credits her success partly to her imperfect image. Whereas the self-assured Stewart pronounces each of her homemaking triumphs "a good thing," Brown is fond of describing hers simply as "not wrong."

Brown honed her homemaking skills while growing up in little Petoskey, Mich., as part of a big clan that prized creativity and family ties. She remembers her mother setting up a craft table in the basement every year so the four kids could make homemade Christmas gifts, and she was given free rein to redecorate her room at age 11.

It was the summers at her family's cottage on Marquette Island, near Michigan's Mackinac Island, that really shaped her style, though.