provided elastomeric staple fibers which behave as ordinary staple fibers until heat treated are included in the hydraulically entangled fabric upon heat treatment the elastomeric fibers become elastic and impart improved stretch and resilience properties to the fabric application_number US 41939982 A description in accordance with this invention the process requires the basic steps of forming a batt of blended staple fibers hydraulically entangling the batt fibers to form a spunlaced fabric and heat treating and spunlaced fabric although each of these basic steps is known in the art the use of these steps with the particular blends of staple fibers required in the present process is novel and leads to unexpectedly large improvements in various physical and aesthetic characteristics of the final product in the first step of the process of the invention a batt is formed from at least two types of staple fibers namely hard fibers and elastomeric fibers that are 34 potentially elastic 34 the fibers which are substantially uniformly intermixed in the batt may have been blended by conventional methods prior to batt formation or may have been blended in the batt forming step itself the hard fiber may be of any staple length or denier suitable for processing on conventional batt making equipment such as cards rando webbers or air laydown equipment such as that disclosed in u s pat no 3 797 074 zafiroglu the hard fibers may be of any synthetic fiber forming material such as polyesters polyamides acrylic polymers and copolymers vinyl polymers cellulose derivatives glass and the like as well as any natural fiber such as cotton wool silk.