METHOD OF MAKING A FABRIC-CREPED ABSORBENT CELLULOSIC SHEET

The invention relates to a method of making a fabric-creped absorbent cellulosic sheet, the method comprising compactively dewatering a papermaking furnish to form a nascent web having an apparently random distribution of papermaking fiber; applying the nascent web having the apparently random fiber distribution to a translating transfer surface that is moving at a transfer surface speed; fabric-creping the nascent web from the transfer surface at a consistency of from about 30 to about 60 percent utilizing a creping fabric that is traveling at a fabric-creping speed, the fabric-creping speed being slower 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, the fabric pattern, nip parameters, velocity delta, and web consistency being selected 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 of high local basis weight, interconnected by way of (ii) a plurality of lower local basis weight linking regions; and applying a vacuum to the web to increase the stretch of the web in the cross machine direction (CD) by at least about 5 percent with respect to a like web produced by a similar method, but without having a vacuum applied thereto after fabric-creping.