Patent ID: 7828931

Claim:
A method of making a cellulosic web for tissue products comprising: (a) preparing an aqueous cellulosic papermaking furnish of a mixture of hardwood and softwood fibers, wherein the furnish consists predominantly of hardwood fiber; (b) providing the papermaking furnish to a forming fabric as a jet issuing from a headbox at a jet speed; (c) compactively dewatering the papermaking furnish to form a nascent web having an apparently random distribution of papermaking fiber; (d) applying the dewatered web having the apparently random fiber distribution to a translating transfer surface moving at a first speed; (e) 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 the second speed slower than the speed of the 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 regions having a high local basis weight, interconnected by way of (ii) a plurality of lower local basis weight linking regions; (f) drying the web; and (g) controlling the hardwood to softwood ratio, fiber length distribution, overall crepe, jet speed, drying and belt creping steps as well as selecting a creping belt pattern such that the web is characterized in that it has an absorbency of at least 5 g/g and a percent CD stretch which is both at least about 2.75 times the MD/CD dry tensile ratio of the web and at least about 5%.