Patent ID: 7704349

Claim:
A method of making a belt-creped absorbent cellulosic sheet comprising: a) compactively dewatering a papermaking furnish to form a nascent web having a generally random distribution of papermaking fiber; b) applying the dewatered web having a generally random fiber distribution to a translating transfer surface moving at a transfer surface speed; c) belt-creping the web from the transfer surface at a consistency of from about 30 to about 60 percent utilizing a patterned creping belt, the creping step occurring under pressure in a belt creping nip defined between the transfer surface and the creping belt wherein the belt is traveling at a belt speed slower than the speed of said transfer surface, the belt pattern, nip parameters, velocity delta and web consistency being selected such that the web is creped from the surface and redistributed on the creping belt to form a web with a reticulum having a plurality of interconnected regions of different fiber orientation including at least (i) a plurality of fiber enriched regions of high local basis weight having an orientation bias in a direction transverse to the machine-direction, interconnected by way of (ii) a plurality of lower local basis weight colligating regions whose fiber orientation bias is offset from the fiber orientation of the fiber enriched regions; and d) drying the web.