Text flickers using FadeTo on sibling element

Text flickers using FadeTo on sibling element

I am working on a small hover effect for a menu structure. I want to add and fade in a div with an image background which is positioned under an <a>-tag with text in it.
The problem appears when the fading effect ends: The Text flickers. I tried a few configuration options and different approaches. When I just fadeTo opacity 0.99 or anything below 1, the text is just positioned behind the div element.

Does anyone know a workaround?

The JS Code:
$(document).ready(function() {
   $("li.row").hover(function(){
      $(this).prepend('<div class="hover-panel">');
     $(this).find(".hover-panel").stop().fadeTo("fast", 0.9);
   },
   function () {
     $(this).find(".hover-panel").stop().fadeTo("fast", 0.01, function(){
       $(this).remove();
     });
    }
    );
});


The HTML markup:
<ul>
<li class="row row-first">
<a class="otd-panel-link" href="website">
</a>
</li>
<li class="row row-even">
<a class="otd-panel-link" href="website">
</li>
<li class="row row-last">
<a class="otd-panel-link" href="website">
</li>
</ul>


The CSS Formatting of the inserted element
ul li.row div.hover-panel
{
  float: left;
  width: 100%;
  height: 74px;
  background: url(images/gradient-white-panel.png) no-repeat;
  margin-bottom: -74px;
 
  filter: alpha(opacity=0);
  -khtml-opacity: 0;     
  -moz-opacity: 0;       
  opacity: 0;
}