thickness between u215b u2033 and 5 u2033 depending on the desired thickness of the resulting fabric is fed from a conveyor 18 of line 20 which may be a carding line or an air laying line and onto lower conveyor belt 10 batt 16 is conveyed in the direction of arrow a to a hydroneedling stage and held between the two conveyor belts 10 at 11 which belts serve to advance the fabric through the hydroneedling stage without stretching the web it may be desirable to wet the batt before the hydroneedling stage to reduce the loft of the batt particularly for batts of higher loft at the hydroneedling stage batt 16 having been compressed somewhat between the two conveyor belts 10 is held against needling drum 14 and subjected to a plurality of pressurized water jets 12 water from the jets 12 traverses porous upper conveyor belt 10 impinges upon batt 16 traverses porous lower conveyor belt 10 and is drawn off through perforations in needling drum 14 as water passes under pressure through batt 16 hydrodynamic energy transforms batt 16 in at least two ways first batt 16 is further compressed to a degree in accordance with the water pressure second the individual fibers of batt 16 are made to cohere mutually align by entanglement with each other because of the regularized and coherent application of hydrodynamic energy to batt 16 the resulting coherently integrated web is of substantially uniform thickness texture and strength making it suitable for use as a fabric after hydroneedling batt 16 is conveyed in the direction of arrow b to a finishing stage because cotton is a highly absorptive material a portion of the water used during hydrodynamic entanglement is absorbed within the cotton.