In the prior art, elastic circular knitted fabrics comprising elastic yarn are commonly used in clothing that fits directly onto the body, including shorts and inner wear such as girdles and brassieres, or undershirts and sports wear such as swimming wear, and a variety of such products are being marketed. Elastic circular knitted fabrics comprising elastic yarn are also widely used not only in body-fitting clothing but also in casual wear including T-shirts, parkas and bottoms. Circular knitted fabrics, because of their structure, generally stretch readily in the weft direction but only stretch very minimally in the warp direction compared to the weft direction, and have therefore been unsatisfactory in terms of compressed feeling and slipping during movement, when such are worn as products.
In addition, in such knitted fabrics that have different degrees of extensibility in the warp direction and weft direction, it is necessary to cut the fabric while matching the direction in which stress is to be applied when wearing the clothing, and the direction of easy stretching of the fabric, and this has placed a major restriction on the method of use of such fabrics.
Therefore, in order to achieve a suitable balance of extensibility in the both the warp and weft directions, for circular knitted fabrics with a double needle bed, there have been proposed circular knitted fabrics having warp elongation, by feeding a covering yarn or core yarn with elastic yarn as the core onto one needle bed, when knitting with each of the needles is independently carried out in each needle bed, but in such cases linkage of the elastic yarn in the warp direction, which governs the extensibility and recoverability in the warp direction, is intermittent, and as a result the movement-following property, resulting from the recoverability when the fabric is used in clothing, has been insufficient (see Patent Document 1 below).
In addition, there have been proposed circular knitted fabrics with excellent soft stretch properties in both the warp and weft directions, by using a specific copolymer elastic yarn and specifying the stitch length of the nonelastic fiber, but since the abrasion resistance is reduced with such specific copolymer elastic yarns, they have been poorly practical for clothing (see Patent Document 2 below).
In recent years, for clothing that closely fits the body, there has been a demand for clothing that not only expands and contracts to match movement of the body but also has a stretching function that supports movement of the body, and with clothing that does not fit directly onto the body, there has been a demand for clothing that reduces the stress produced when the clothing is worn, such as compressed feeling or clothing slippage, in the course of movement or routine operations. With the knitted fabrics of the prior art described above, however, it has been difficult to obtain clothing that stretches to the same extent in both the warp and weft directions and that has excellent elongation recovery, resulting in a satisfactory movement-following property and no disadvantages in terms of practical performance including abrasion resistance.