Nicole used only a fraction of her ribbon to wrap the present 
 
the length of ribbon she used is 6 feeet 
 
so lets name the length of the ribbon she had originally as X 
 
the fraction of X she used was - 3/8 of X 
 
so we can write the following equation 
 
 
 
when of function is used we multiply 
 
 
 
3X = 6*8 
 
3X = 48 
 
X = 16 
 
therefore length of the original ribbon piece Nicole had was 16 feet