Patent ID: 8398818

Claim:
An absorbent cellulosic sheet having a variable local basis weight, the sheet comprising: a patterned papermaking-fiber reticulum that includes: (a) a plurality of generally machine direction (MD) oriented elongated densified regions of compressed paper-making fibers having a relatively low local basis weight as well as leading and trailing edges, the densified regions being arranged in a repeating pattern of a plurality of generally parallel linear arrays that are longitudinally staggered with respect to each other, such that a plurality of intervening linear arrays is disposed between a pair of cross machine direction (CD) aligned densified regions; and (b) a plurality of fiber-enriched, pileated regions having a relatively high local basis weight interspersed between and connected with the densified regions, the pileated regions having crests extending generally in the CD of the sheet, wherein the generally parallel, linear arrays of densified regions are positioned and configured such that a fiber-enriched, pileated region between a pair of CD-aligned densified regions extends in the CD, unobstructed by leading or trailing edges of densified regions of at least one intervening linear array thereof.