Patent ID: 8409404

Claim:
A method of making a paper towel comprising: (a) preparing a plurality of base sheets by way of (i) compactively dewatering a papermaking furnish to form a nascent web having an apparently random distribution of papermaking fiber; (ii) applying the dewatered web having the apparently random fiber distribution to a translating transfer surface moving at a first speed; and (iii) fabric-creping the web from the transfer surface at a consistency of from about 30 to about 60 percent utilizing a patterned creping fabric, the creping step occurring under pressure in a fabric creping nip defined between the transfer surface and the creping fabric wherein the fabric is traveling at a second speed slower than the speed of said transfer surface, the fabric 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 fabric to form a web with a structure having a plurality of interconnected regions of different local basis weights including at least (A) a plurality of fiber enriched regions of high local basis weight, interconnected by way of (B) a plurality of lower local basis weight linking regions; and (iv) drying the web to form base sheets; (b) embossing the web prepared in step (a); (c) plying the embossed web together with another ply to form a multi-ply towel, and (d) pulling out the multi-ply towel in a machine direction to a target weight, wherein the base sheets are prepared, embossed and adhered together such that the towel exhibits a GM TEA, mm-g/mm 2 , of greater than [0.00952 (GM Tensile, g/cm)−0.75] as well as a GM Tensile Modulus, g/cm/%, less than [0.0249 (GM Tensile Strength, g/cm)+6.06].