How do I control the placement of a fill pattern?

I understand how to select a swatch for use as a "flood-fill" in a live paint enclosed area or with the "paint bucket" from the gradient tool. 

I often want to align the fill pattern to the boundaries of the enclosed area.  For example, to have the pattern appear centered in the enclosing area.

However, the pattern fill placement is always the same no matter where I click in the enclosed area.  As best I can tell, the placement of the fill is based on the overall artboard, not on the mouse click.

Is there a way to adjust how a pattern fills an area?  So far the only way to get a specific placement is to first move the item I am looking to fill, filling it, then seeing how it looks.  I then move it about some more until the fill looks right.  Then I expand the object.  But is tedious and error-prone.

Is there a better way to position the fill pattern?

I'm doing this in Illustrator CS6.