Patent ID: 7503998

Claim:
A method of making a fabric-creped absorbent cellulosic sheet comprising: a) forming a furnish comprising papermaking fibers dispersed in an aqueous medium; b) providing a translating foraminous forming fabric, said forming fabric translating at a wire velocity; c) issuing a jet of said furnish upon said forming fabric, said jet issuing at a jet velocity; d)forming a nascent web having an apparently random distribution of fiber orientation from a papermaking furnish on said forming fabric; e) non-compactively drying the nascent web to a consistency of from about 30 to about 60 percent; f) thereafter transferring the web to a rotating surface of a transfer cylinder moving at a first speed; g) fabric-creping the web from the transfer cylinder at a consistency of from about 30 to about 60 percent under pressure in a fabric creping nip defined between the transfer cylinder and a patterned creping fabric traveling at a second speed slower than said transfer cylinder, wherein the web is creped from the cylinder and substantially rearranged on the creping fabric such that it no longer has an apparently random distribution of fiber orientation, rather the web has non-random fiber orientation biased in a direction other than the machine direction; h) retaining the wet web in the creping fabric; and i) drying the wet web while it is held in the creping fabric to a consistency of at least about 90 percent, wherein consistency of the web in the fabric creping nip, fabric pattern, nip parameters, fabric crepe ratio, jet velocity and wire velocity are selected and controlled such that the web has an absorbency of at least about 5 g/g, a CD stretch of at least about 4 percent, and a MD/CD tensile ratio of less than about 1.75.