The Shirt Machine is an animated children's story about the relationship between the young narrator, and her Uncle. He is far away in his garden shed on the remote Island of Mull in Scotland, makes shirts using his self-built Shirt Machine. But these are no ordinary shirts, they are impossible, fantastic shirts. Edible and Flying shirts among others. The Shirt Machine is very famous, and very fashionable. The film deals with friendship and distance, the narrator expressing her recognition that the fame and excitement that the Shirt Machine brings to her Uncle, and therefore indirectly to her as well, is no substitute for more concrete contact and interaction that's lacking due to the physical distance and so absence of her Uncle.