Polycarboxylic acids have been used as non-formaldehyde durable press finishing agents for cotton fabrics. Previously, we found that itaconic acid (IA) polymerized in situ on cotton fabric and also in an aqueous solution in the presence of a K2S2O8/NaH2PO2 initiation system. Both poly(itaconic acid) (PIA) and the polymer formed by in situ polymerization of IA are able to crosslink cotton cellulose, thus imparting wrinkle resistance to cotton. In this research, we compared the performance of the cotton fabric crosslinked by PTA and that crosslinked by in situ polymerization of IA. The fabric treated with PTA and that treated with IA had similar wrinkle recovery angles. The cotton fabric treated with IA, however, lost more tensile strength than that treated with PTA due to cellulose degradation. We determined the magnitude of the fabric tensile strength loss attributed to crosslinking by separating the tensile strength loss due to cellulose degradation from the total tensile strength loss, and found that the tensile strength loss caused by crosslinking for the fabric treated with PIA was significantly higher than that for the fabric treated with IA. This can probably be attributed to more concentrated crosslinkages formed on the near surface of the PTA-treated cotton fabric. PTA had poorer penetration into the amorphous cellulose region in fiber interior due to its much larger molecular size, thus increasing its concentration on the fabric's near surface. The data also suggest that more concentrated crosslinkages on the fabric surface reduced fabric abrasion resistance. (C) 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.