Patent ID: 8388803

Claim:
A method of making a fabric-creped absorbent cellulosic sheet, the method comprising: (a) compactively dewatering a papermaking furnish to form a nascent web having a random distribution of papermaking fiber; (b) applying the nascent web having the random fiber distribution to a translating transfer surface that is moving at a transfer surface speed; (c) fabric-creping the nascent web from the transfer surface at a consistency of from about 30 percent to about 60 percent utilizing a patterned creping fabric that is traveling at a fabric-creping speed, the fabric-creping speed being lower than the transfer surface speed, the fabric-creping step occurring under pressure in a fabric creping nip defined between the transfer surface and the creping fabric, such that the nascent web is creped from the transfer surface and redistributed on the creping fabric to form a creped web with a drawable 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; (d) applying the creped web to a drying cylinder; (e) drying the creped web on the drying cylinder to form a dried web; (f) peeling the dried web from the drying cylinder; (g) controlling the takeaway angle of the dried web from the drying cylinder, wherein steps (d), (e), (f) and (g) are performed so as to substantially preserve the drawable reticulum; and (h) drawing the dried web between a first draw roll and a second draw roll, the first draw roll moving at a first machine-direction velocity that is eater than the fabric-creping speed.