Thank you all for the advice. Suzied and Ayse the running stitch did it, and there is a knack to doing them. I now have six covered buttons, they are not perfect but will be fine for a costume with a sort of WW1 look. One more to finish.
The instructions on the packet were very basic indeed and did not give the sort of tips you need, like which side round to put the back plate. On the card they are held on with the plate back to front. It is certainly not as straight forward as they claim.
There is also a knack to using the press to push the back plate on instead of putting it on straight and whacking it hard I sort of rolled the press around the plate and it went on really well.
Thank you all again.
GN is just great for such problems.
Angela Rayner lashes out and calls Sunak “pint sized loser”.