Abstract: Aqueous emulsion copolymer composition useful as a textile treatment to provide superior durability to repeated washing and dry cleaning and increased stability to prolonged heat and light, to methods of preparing the aqueous emulsion polymers and to methods of treating textile materials with the compositions. The aqueous emulsion is characterized as being a thermally self-crosslinkable copolymer having a molecular weight in the range 50,000 to 10,000,000, a second order transition temperature (Tg) in the range -40.degree. C. to +30.degree. C. comprising:(a) 0.5 to 3% by weight of itaconic acid,(b) 2 to 12% by weight of glycidyl methacrylate,(c) 1 to 7% by weight of N-methylol acrylamide or N-methylol methacrylamide,(d) 35 to 96.5% by weight of ethylacrylate, and(e) at least one compatible monoethylenically unsaturated monomer.