Patent ID: 7820008

Claim:
A method of making a belt-creped absorbent cellulosic sheet comprising: (a) compactively dewatering a papermaking furnish to form a nascent web having an apparently random distribution of papermaking fiber orientation; (b) applying the dewatered web having the apparently random distribution of fiber orientation 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% 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 transfer surface and redistributed on the creping belt to form a web with a reticulum having a plurality of interconnected regions of different local basis weights including at least (i) a plurality of fiber-enriched pileated regions of high local basis weight, interconnected by way of (ii) a plurality of elongated densified regions of compressed papermaking fibers, the elongated densified regions having relatively low local basis weight and being generally oriented along the machine direction (MD) of the sheet, the elongated densified regions being further characterized by an MD/CD aspect ratio of at least 1.5; and (d) drying the web.